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News > Analysis

South Carolina Will Test Candidates' Support Among Black Voters

  • Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has breakfast with Al Sharpton in an effort to broaden his appeal among African-American voters.

    Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has breakfast with Al Sharpton in an effort to broaden his appeal among African-American voters. | Photo: Reuters

Published 12 February 2016
Opinion

Clinton and Sanders see the state's large Black population as crucial for winning the primary, but they are not one-issue voters.

South Carolina is the first state in the U.S. presidential nominating contest that will test how the candidates fare with Black voters, who form more than a quarter of the electorate.

The state that started the Civil War was in the headlines last year after a white supremacist opened fire at a Black church, carrying out a massacre that ultimately led the state government to take down the Confederate flag that flew over the capitol.

Nearly 30 percent of the state is African American, the fifth-largest Black population in the United States. This group helped propel Barack Obama to victory in the state's primary in 2008 when he was running against Hillary Clinton, until recently the Democratic Party's presumed nominee.

ANALYSIS: Bernie Sanders Now Needs to Focus on Black and Latino Voters

Clinton today enjoys a comfortable lead among Black voters, but that support can no longer be taken for granted in the wake of a stronger than expected challenge from Bernie Sanders, who has begun to speak more and more about the need for criminal justice reform and other issues important to people of color.

Black voters may remember that Clinton's campaign came under fire several times for perceived racism following Obama’s 2008 victory in South Carolina, with former President Bill Clinton appearing to have attributed the future president's victory to his race alone. On the issues, African-American voters identify job creation, health care and education as top priorities, according to a study by the NAACP — all issues on which Bernie Sanders has a more progressive record, according to prominent Black social critics such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander.

Sanders’ popularity among young voters includes Black youth in South Carolina, according to NPR, who could convince their parents and grandparents to vote for the Vermont senator. Still, many Black pundits have expressed disappointment over Sanders' history of favoring a strictly class-based analysis over race, though pressure from activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement has succeeded in shifting both his positions and rhetoric.

IN DEPTH: Road to the US Election 2016

South Carolina has gained a reputation in the United States for lagging behind the times with respect to issues that directly affect its Black population, but an empowered community has led to several recent changes. After the deadly shooting at the historically Black church — which exposed the state’s lack of a hate crime law — activists were able to pressure the state legislature to take down the Confederate flag from the state capitol. Uproar about a law requiring photo identification to vote, which disproportionately affects minority citizens, helped lead to its rejection. The first state to introduce voter ID laws, South Carolina still requires voters to present a non-photo ID.

WATCH: Fallout from Charleston Church Massacre Reaches Presidential Campaign

Clinton maintains a significant lead over Sanders in the latest polls, but the latter has been gaining, and many voters are not yet convinced either has earned their support. New York Times columnist Charles Blow reflected the attitude of many disillusioned post-Obama voters in a recent piece when he quoted James Baldwin’s view of African Americans as “political weapons, the trump card up the enemies’ sleeve; anything promised the Negroes at election time is also a threat leveled at the opposition.”

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