Biden won the South Carolina primary by 94 points. Trump could never.

COLUMBIA, S.C. >> Though some disaffected Democrats will try to dismiss President Biden’s runaway victory in Saturday’s primary here, they’re just plain wrong. Sure, there was low turnout, but Black voters were overrepresented among those who showed up, and they were determined to do so against any challenges.

Democrats in South Carolina, having helped catapult Biden to the nomination and the presidency in 2020, did their best to repeat the trick. He won a near-unanimous 96 percent of the vote in what was, after all, a contested primary. Challengers Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips finished in rounding-error territory, with roughly 2 percent each. Some national polls have shown anemic enthusiasm for Biden’s reelection within his own party, but voters here apparently did not get the memo.

Black voters cast roughly three-fourths of the early vote, according to the state Democratic Party, though they make up only about half of the state’s Democratic electorate. Among the African Americans who waited until primary day to cast a ballot were the Rev. Mickey Joyner and his wife, Teresa.

“The president deserves two terms to finish his work,” Mickey Joyner said, standing outside of the Earlewood Park Community Center just north of downtown. “He’s done a good job.”

Teresa Joyner said that “we don’t even understand the reason for having a primary,” given Biden’s incumbency. She and her husband said they were determined, above all, to keep Donald Trump from regaining power. Trump “has no respect for the law,” in Mickey Joyner’s words, and Teresa Joyner said the former president “reminds me of a 5- or 6-year-old.”

Just figuring out where to vote was a challenge for some in the Columbia area: At the last minute, county and state election officials consolidated polling stations without making any meaningful effort to inform the public. Four precincts that normally voted elsewhere were assigned to the Earlewood site.

Among those who arrived at their regular polling place only to be disappointed was none other than Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, a South Carolina native. He and the chair of the state party, Christale Spain, had arranged to meet reporters on Saturday morning at the site where Harrison always votes — on Arsenal Hill, across Lincoln Street from the governor’s mansion.

When they got there, the building was dark and empty. “Now, why’d they close my precinct?” Harrison asked his aides, rhetorically. He said that by putting South Carolina first in its 2024 primary calendar, the Democratic Party is “delivering on its promise to Black voters,” whom he described as “the backbone” of the party.

Four years ago, Biden’s landslide victory here — sparked by an endorsement from the state’s most influential Democratic official, Rep. James E. Clyburn — seemed to signal to African American voters across the country that it was time to get aboard the Biden train. That is the president’s hope again this year.

It’s worth paying attention to how people are casting a ballot when they’re given the chance — and provided with alternatives they supposedly want. In a low-turnout primary that no one was compelled to be enthusiastic about, Black voters were more enthusiastic than others and made their choice clear.

When Trump beat Nikki Haley in New Hampshire by 11 points, his victory was widely characterized with adjectives such as “dominant.” Biden did not even participate in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, which the national party saw as illegitimate, but still he beat Phillips by 44 points — as a write-in, no less. Yet this feat was dismissed as “meh.”

There is no ironclad guarantee that Trump will win the primary in South Carolina at all, though polling has shown him well ahead. Haley can look at Saturday’s turnout and hope that some Democrats stayed home so they can weaken Trump by voting for her in the GOP contest.

When Republicans hold their South Carolina primary on Feb. 24, Trump might well defeat Haley in her home state. But to equal Biden’s victory margin, he would have to win by 94 points. So who, exactly, is dominating his party’s race for the nomination?