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| - Voters headed to the polls in South Carolina on Saturday with Joe Biden looking for a first primary win to stall Bernie Sanders' drive to the Democratic presidential nomination. The 77-year-old former vice president to Barack Obama is the favorite in the first state with a substantial African-American electorate to hold a primary contest. But Vermont Senator Sanders is the clear front-runner in the overall race having won both New Hampshire and Nevada after finishing in a virtual tie in Iowa with former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg. Polling booths opened across South Carolina, which Republican Donald Trump won easily in the 2016 presidential election, at 7:00 am (1200 GMT) and are to close at 7:00 pm (0000 GMT). Biden finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and second in Nevada and he desperately needs a win in South Carolina ahead of next week's "Super Tuesday," when 14 states go to the polls. One-third of the delegates who formally choose the Democratic nominee at the July party convention will be up for grabs on Super Tuesday. Biden said he hopes South Carolina will propel him into national contention. "I think I'll do well," he told CNN. "It's been the launching pad for Barack and, I believe, for me," Biden added, referring to the nation's first black president. Biden is seen as needing a decisive win over the leftist firebrand Sanders here to revive his flagging White House bid. "If Biden loses South Carolina, it would be a tremendous setback for his campaign, potentially disastrous," Kendall Deas, a political scientist at the College of Charleston, told AFP. Biden leads in state polling, a dozen points ahead of Sanders and 20 points up on billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who is gunning for a third-place finish. Steyer has spent $23.6 million on ads in South Carolina, nearly 10 times the number two spender, Buttigieg, according to Advertising Analytics. "I expect to surprise people by doing really well here," Steyer told CNN. "By doing really well with African-Americans." Biden and Steyer have primary night rallies scheduled in South Carolina but the other candidates have moved on already to the Super Tuesday states. Sanders is in Virginia, Senator Elizabeth Warren is in Texas and Buttigieg was spending the day in Tennessee and North Carolina. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who is not on the ballot in South Carolina, spent the day in Virginia and North Carolina. At one polling place in a suburb of the state capital Columbia, about 20 people were lined up at 7:00 am when the doors opened. Samantha Rogers, a 67-year-old retiree, said Biden is the right candidate to take on Trump. "He's more experienced. He's for all people, not just African-Americans. He's for everyone," said Rogers, who is black. But for 21-year-old student Andrea Green, "Bernie is telling the truth. He's authentic." Biden and fellow moderates including Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar may well face a Sanders buzzsaw come Super Tuesday, with the self-declared "democratic socialist" leading in the two biggest prizes, including crown jewel California. Sanders is dominating there with 32.5 percent support, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, with fellow progressive Warren second. Biden is a distant third with just 12.5 percent, in danger of missing the 15 percent threshold for earning delegates from the state. In Texas, the other Super Tuesday delegate gold mine, a new CNN poll showed Sanders ahead of Biden by six points. The senator also tops polls in Super Tuesday states Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, Utah, Virginia, his home state of Vermont and Warren's Massachusetts. Some of the races are tight. With several Democratic establishment leaders fretting that Sanders could hold an insurmountable delegate lead after Tuesday, some have begun openly sounding the alarm. South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, an influential black lawmaker who has endorsed Biden, warned of "down-ballot carnage" if the Democratic nominee is seen as too radical. With party grandees desperate for a moderate to halt Sanders, the front-runner punched back. "One of the things the establishment is doing is, they're saying, 'Bernie can't beat Trump,'" Sanders told a crowd in St. George, South Carolina. He pointed out that over the last 60 head-to-head polls with the incumbent, "we're ahead of Trump in 56 of them." Sanders said his campaign will triumph "because we have an agenda that speaks to the needs of working-class people." cl/acb
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