Here’s Your South Carolina Primary Winner

Hillary Clinton secured a landslide victory in South Carolina's Democratic primary Saturday, according to projections and early results. The Associated Press declared the former secretary of state the projected winner as soon as the polls closed at 7 p.m. — before the actual results even began to trickle in. Early results reported by CNN showed Clinton trouncing U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. 87.5 % to 12.5 %. Clinton was the heavy favorite in the days ahead of the contest. FiveThirtyEight gave her a better than 99% chance of winning the state on Friday afternoon — before polls even opened. Clinton, who returned to The Palmetto State for a primary night rally with supporters Saturday, tweeted in celebration shortly after the polls closed.

Sanders, meanwhile, spent the days leading up to the primary campaigning in other, more competitive states, according to Politico. The Sanders campaign released a statement Saturday saying the campaign is "just beginning." In a technical sense, the state is a tiebreaker primary for the two Democratic candidates. Clinton won last week’s Nevada caucuses and Sanders took the New Hampshire primary. The Iowa caucuses were effectively a tie, with Clinton taking 49.9% of the votes and Sanders getting 49.6%. Since Iowa splits its delegates more or less proportionately to the percentage of the votes a candidate wins, the technical Clinton win was mostly illusory. But Clinton has held a steady lead on Sanders in another important aspect of the nominating contest. While the results leave the two candidates reasonably even when it comes to securing states' delegates, Clinton still maintains a lead among superdelegates, whose votes aren’t tied to primary results, according to The New York Times. The rivals will go head-to-head again this week on Super Tuesday, when a dozen states and territories are set to hold primaries and caucuses as part of the Democratic nominating contest. This story will be updated as results and candidate statements roll in. It was originally published at 7 p.m. on February, 27, 2016.