Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton, who’s the front-runner over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the party nomination, is favored largely among blacks in South Carolina where the pair will appear Friday night for a forum at Winthrop University.
According to a new university poll, Clinton has surged ahead of Sanders, 71 percent to 15 percent, due to her large advantage among nonwhite voters.
While Sanders declares to have “the strongest record” of any Congress member on civil rights, he is admittedly still largely unknown among black voters.
“If the elections were held today, just among the African-American vote, we would lose,” Sanders told National Public Radio during an interview Thursday. “But I think we have a real path to winning the support of the African-American community.”
Meanwhile, in a memo — “The Importance of the African-American Vote” — sent to allies ahead of the South Carolina trip, the Clinton campaign notes that some recent polls shows her with a 50-plus-point advantage over Sanders among blacks nationally.
“We are in a strong position to be successful,” the memo states, claiming the campaign has already contacted 142,500 voters and held 1,100 organizing events in South Carolina alone.