COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Joe Biden scored a victory in South Carolina's Democratic primary on Saturday, ending rival Bernie Sanders' winning streak.
The race now pivots to a new phase, with 14 states to be decided this week on Super Tuesday.
"We are very much alive," Biden declared at an exuberant post-election rally in Columbia, S.C. Cheers went up as media outlets began calling the race soon after the polls closed.
"For all of you who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind -- this is your campaign," Biden said.
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Sanders claimed second place. He congratulated the former vice president on winning South Carolina, then said he was looking to Virginia, which is one of the 14 states voting Tuesday.
Addressing thousands of supporters at Virginia Wesleyan University in Virginia Beach on Saturday night, Sanders noted that he'd won in New Hampshire and Nevada and secured a virtual tie for first in Iowa.
"But you can't win 'em all," said the senator from Vermont. "A lot of states out there, and tonight we did not win in South Carolina."
As the crowd booed, Sanders added: "That will not be the only defeat. There are a lot of states in this country, and nobody wins them all."
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Meanwhile, billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who poured millions of dollars into his Democratic presidential campaign, is ending his bid after a disappointing finish in the South Carolina primary.
Steyer announced Saturday night in Columbia that he was dropping out of the White House race. After spending nearly $24 million on television advertising in the state, he finished behind Biden and Sanders on Saturday.
"Honestly, I can't see a path where I can win the presidency," Steyer said.
Biden's allies almost immediately cast the South Carolina victory as proof that he should stand as the clear alternative to Sanders.
It was a major win for a figure who has been in public life for 45 years, and it was Biden's first primary victory in his three presidential runs. Biden cast the win as the first of many dominoes that will now fall his way, noting that some were counting him out just days ago.
"Now, thanks to all of you -- the heart of the Democratic Party -- we just won and we won big," Biden said in his victory speech.
"We have the option of winning big or losing big. That's our choice," Biden told the raucous crowd in Columbia. "We have to beat Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but here's the deal: We can't become like them. ... We can't have a never-ending war."
At stake in South Carolina are 54 pledged delegates of the 1,991 needed to win the Democratic nomination.
Before South Carolina, Sanders had 45 delegates; former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg had 26; Biden had 15; and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., had 8.
VYING FOR POSITION
Even before news of Biden's win, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a plan to deliver a three-minute prime-time address tonight on two television networks. He didn't say how much he paid for the air time, which is unprecedented in recent decades.
Members of Bloomberg's campaign privately acknowledged that Biden was likely to get a bump in momentum out of his South Carolina win, but they still believe Bloomberg can win in a handful of states that vote on Super Tuesday, including Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Virginia and North Carolina.
Bloomberg will appear on the ballot for the first time on Super Tuesday. His advisers cited internal campaign data showing that if Bloomberg dropped out of the race, it would strengthen Sanders, whose left-leaning policies the former mayor opposes.
Moments after Biden's victory was confirmed, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe formally endorsed the former vice president and encouraged the Democratic Party's moderate wing to unite behind him. On CNN, he called on several candidates to get out of the race -- "not after Tuesday, but tomorrow."
But the Democrats' 2020 primary election isn't yet a two-person race.
Not ceding anything, Buttigieg is fighting to prove he can build a multiracial coalition. And Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota vowed to keep pushing forward no matter how they finished on Saturday.
Shortly after congratulating Biden for winning, Warren accused him of being too eager to cut deals with Republicans.
Speaking in Houston on Saturday, Warren said Biden was too willing to "trade good ideas for bad ones."
Warren said Sanders has good ideas but also a 30-year record in which "he consistently calls for things that fail to get done" and opposes things he fails to stop.
And Bloomberg, Warren said, believes his wealth "entitles him to be the president." She argued that he would "govern to protect himself and his rich friends over everyone else."
Warren acknowledged that the first four contests in the Democratic primary had not gone well for her campaign, but she pledged to fight for as many delegates as possible on Super Tuesday.
Klobuchar is also looking ahead to Super Tuesday after Biden's victory in South Carolina.
In a fundraising email with the subject line "Tonight," the senator on Saturday thanked her team and said her "scrappy homegrown campaign has grown into a powerful nationwide movement." But, she said, "there is still a long way to go."
Trump was paying close attention to the Democratic race.
Speaking in front of conservative activists earlier in the day, the president conducted a poll of sorts by asking his audience to cheer for who would be the best Democratic contender for him to face in November.
Sanders was the clear winner.
"How could you be easier to beat than Joe? That guy can't put two sentences together," Trump asked attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington. "But you know he is more down the middle. Everyone knows he's not a communist, and with Bernie there's a real question about that."
BIDEN'S S.C. SUPPORT
Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders called South Carolina a "springboard" for the campaign, on par with how the state boosted the presidential aspirations of former President Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Biden has received several high-profile endorsements in recent days. In addition to McAuliffe, Rep. Robert "Bobby" Scott, D-Va., announced shortly after Biden's win that he was backing the former vice president.
Nearly half of South Carolina voters said the final-week endorsement of Biden by Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., was an important factor in their vote, according to exit poll results from Edison Research.
While voting technology was a concern in two of the first three contests in the Democratic race, South Carolina uses a wide array of voting technology that presents unique challenges.
Saturday's election in South Carolina marked the first statewide test of its new set of electronic voting machines, a $50 million upgrade from an old and vulnerable system that lacked any paper record of individual votes. The new machines produce paper records that can be verified by the voters and checked after the election to detect any malfunction or manipulation.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez cautioned Democrats that it's still early in their presidential primary race.
Speaking at a North Carolina Democratic Party fundraising gala, Perez noted that to win the nomination, a Democrat must have 1,991 delegates -- and only a fraction of those have been allocated in the party's first four contests.
"We have a long way to go," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Meg Kinnard, Bill Barrow, Will Weissert, Brian Slodysko, Thomas Beaumont and Alexandra Jaffe of The Associated Press; by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Michael Scherer of The Washington Post; and by Ryan Teague Beckwith and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 03/01/2020