What Went Down At The South Carolina Primary

Galen, I’d take that stat with a grain of salt. Exit polls are still preliminary, and young voters tend to vote late in the day. I’d expect that number to rise in the final few updates.

Part of the reason Joe Biden is doing well tonight? Voters under the age of 45 made up a grand total of 29 percent of voters, according to preliminary exit polls. There has not been a surge of young voters at the polls this primary. I spoke with a South Carolina voter earlier this week who said her kids and her friends’ kids were simply not interested in the primary.

Biden would need a delegate margin of 30 over Sanders in South Carolina to tie him in the national delegate count. In FiveThirtyEight’s final forecast before today’s primary, Biden’s average delegate margin over Sanders was about 16 in scenarios where Biden won the primary. In 19 percent of those scenarios, Biden’s delegate margin over Sanders was at least 30.