Biden on Saturday defeated his long-shot challengers on South Carolina’s Democratic ballot, including Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson.

His reelection campaign invested heavily in driving up turnout in what it saw as a test drive of its efforts to mobilize Black voters, a Democratic bloc central to Biden’s chances in a likely November rematch against former President Trump.

“In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the presidency,” Biden said in a statement. “Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the Presidency again — and making Donald Trump a loser — again.”

The Associated Press declared Biden the winner based on an analysis of initial vote results showing him with a decisive lead in key locations throughout the state.

His win comes after he led a Democratic National Committee effort to have South Carolina go first in the party’s primary, citing the state’s more racially diverse population compared with the traditional first-in-the-nation states of Iowa and New Hampshire, which are overwhelmingly white.

South Carolina is reliably Republican, but 26% of its residents are Black. In the 2020 general election, Black voters made up 11% of the national electorate, and 9 in 10 of them supported Biden, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of that election’s voters.

Biden pushed for a revamped primary calendar that will see Nevada go second, holding its primary Tuesday. The new order also moves the Democratic primary in Michigan, a large and diverse swing state, to Feb. 27, before a wide field of states, including California, votes on Super Tuesday, March 5.

New Hampshire rejected the DNC’s plan and held a lead-off primary last month anyway. Biden didn’t campaign and his name wasn’t on the ballot, but still won by a sizable margin after supporters mounted a write-in campaign on his behalf.

South Carolina, where Biden has long held deep relationships with supporters and donors, also played a pivotal role in his 2020 campaign, where a big win helped revive a flagging effort in other early-voting states and propelled him to the nomination.

Biden was aided by South Carolina Democratic Rep. James E. Clyburn, whose 2020 endorsement served as a long-awaited signal to the state’s Black voters that Biden would be the right candidate to advocate for their interests.

Clyburn said Saturday night that he believed New Hampshire’s delegates should be seated at the party’s convention this summer and that Democrats should avoid any further infighting.

Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve in the role, have consistently thanked the state’s Democrats for their support.

Biden a week ago told attendees at a state party fundraiser that “you’re the reason I am president.” He also argued to an audience of hundreds of party faithful that they were “the reason Donald Trump is a loser. And you’re the reason we’re going to win and beat him again,” framing the likely general election matchup with the GOP’s current front-runner.

Biden was in Delaware on Saturday before leaving the East Coast for a trip to California and Nevada. He attended an open house at his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, telling supporters that voters around the country are beginning to focus on the election and “the polling data is picking up across the board.”

“We cannot, we cannot, we cannot lose this campaign, for the good of the country,” Biden said.

Biden also called into four Black radio stations to talk up the importance of South Carolina’s primary, telling WJMZ Radio in Greenville, “We have a large African American population in America, they deserve to have a say — particularly in the Democratic Party — a say in who the nominee should be.”

Early Saturday, in South Carolina’s capital of Columbia, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said, “We all know that we, because of the color of this, we, our great grandparents, our grandparents, could not always vote here.” A South Carolina native who is Black, Harrison pointed to his own skin.

“For this president to say, ‘Jaime, for the entirety of your life, we have started this process in Iowa and New Hampshire, and now, we’re going to start it in South Carolina’ — no other president before ever decided to touch that issue,” Harrison added. “But Joe Biden did, and I will always be grateful to the president for giving us a chance, for seeing us, and understanding how much we matter.”

Many Black Democrats in South Carolina are still loyal to Biden after he was vice president to the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama.

The DNC sponsored a six-figure ad campaign across the state and Nevada to boost enthusiasm for the president among Black and Latino voters. Nevada’s population is 30% Latino.

Black voters interviewed during the recent early voting period listed a range of reasons for supporting Biden, from his administration’s defense of abortion rights to appointing Black jurists and other minorities to the federal courts.

Some echoed Biden’s warnings that Trump, were he to retake the White House, would threaten democracy as he continues to push lies that the 2020 vote was stolen.

“We can’t live with a leader that will make this into a dictatorship. We can’t live in a place that is not a democracy. That will be a fall for America,” said LaJoia Broughton, a 42-year-old small-business owner in Columbia. “So my vote is with Biden. It has been with Biden and will continue to be with Biden.”

Some voters said they were concerned about the 81-year-old Biden’s age, as many Americans have said they are in public polling. Trump is 77. Both men have had a series of public flubs that have fueled concern among some voters.

“They’re as old as I am, and to have these two guys be the only choices, that’s kind of difficult,” said Charles Trower, a 77-year-old from Blythewood, S.C. “But I would much rather have President Biden than even consider the other guy.”

The Democratic establishment — and even potential presidential hopefuls who could have competed against the president from the left or middle — have lined up behind Biden. The DNC also isn’t planning primary debates, while Phillips has challenged his name not appearing on primary ballots in Florida and North Carolina.

The president’s reelection campaign says it’s already focusing on November’s general election. Biden’s campaign, the DNC and its other fundraising arms announced raising more than $97 million in the final three months of last year and entered 2024 with $117.4 million in cash on hand. Trump amassed about $130 million in 2023’s final quarter and had more than $42 million to start the election year.