It’s do or die for Joe Biden in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, analysts say, as a new poll showed his lead over Bernie Sanders slipping into single digits just before the pivotal Super Tuesday contests.
“Winning the South Carolina primary is absolutely necessary for Biden. A loss would doom him,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told The Post.
“A squeaker won’t help him too much, either. Biden needs a big win, at least high single digits and preferably double digits,” he added.
A Biden loss would hammer his chances in the 14 state and primary elections set for Super Tuesday, where 1,338 delegates are up for grabs.
Veteran New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf agreed that the political stakes are dire.
“If Joe Biden loses in South Carolina, he’ll have to turn out the lights because the party will be over. Really over,” he told The Post on Friday.
Biden had 34 percent support in a survey released Friday by Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, followed by Sanders of Vermont with 25 percent, California businessman Tom Steyer with 13 percent and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 13 percent.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) had 7 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) 5 percent and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) had 3 percent.
Tw polls on Thursday showed Biden with far wider leads over Sanders, with a Monmouth survey showing Biden leading 36 percent to 16 percent, and an Emerson poll showing Biden ahead 41 percent to 25 percent.
Mike Bloomberg is not on the South Carolina ballot, having entered the race too late to qualify.
Biden hopes that his lead among black voters may give his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination a boost after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire and a distant second-place finish in Nevada, and ahead of Super Tuesday.
Biden visited three South Carolina communities on Friday, days after receiving an endorsement from House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American on Capitol Hill and regarded as the most influential Democrat in South Carolina.
Thursday’s Monmouth poll showed Biden with large support from black South Carolina voters, who make up about 60 percent of the state’s Democratic electorate.
Sanders, currently leading among Democrats in national opinion polls, Warren and Buttigieg also campaigned across the state.
Biden’s campaign was also celebrating a $1.2 million, one-day online fundraising haul, the most contributed by small-dollar Internet donors since his campaign launch last year, when similar contributions added up to more than $6 million.
At a campaign event in Sumter, SC, undecided voter Marybeth Berry, 44, told Biden that she saw a “fire” in some of his rivals and asked what drove him.
“Because you see Bernie, you see Elizabeth Warren, you see that fire. That’s what I’m looking for,” said Berry, a University of South Carolina Lancaster theater professor.
Biden looked Berry in the eyes and said: “The fact that I’m not screaming like Bernie and waving my arms like Elizabeth, it’s not lack of fire.”
He said “decency and honor” drove him and that he hated to see the “abuse of power” against vulnerable people.
But whether Biden can use a win in South Carolina to propel him to bigger wins on Super Tuesday was very much in question.
Biden’s top rivals, Sanders and Bloomberg, have dwarfed him in organization and spending, and early voting has already begun in many states, including delegate-rich California and Texas, before Biden’s campaign could reestablish its footing.
In Biden’s ideal, a South Carolina rebound would blunt the momentum of Sanders, the progressive favorite and current national delegate leader who led voting in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, while gutting the case for Bloomberg, a multibillionaire whose late entry to the race in November was almost entirely pegged on the idea that Biden would collapse after losing Iowa and New Hampshire.
Polls in South Carolina are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and anyone in line to vote by 7 p.m. will be permitted to cast a ballot.
The South Carolina primary winner will get 54 pledged delegates with another nine “PLEO” delegates, including the state party leader and other elected officials.
Data for Progress surveyed 1,416 likely voters in South Carolina between Feb. 23 to 27. The poll’s margin of error was +/-2.6 percent.
With Post wires