If President Joe Biden was hoping to recapture the magic of the South Carolina primary four years ago, Palmetto State Democrats did not disappoint on Saturday.

The incumbent president is projected to win the South Carolina primary in a decisive fashion, with The Associated Press calling the race shortly after the polls closed on Saturday evening. 

“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 released by his campaign shortly after the race was called. “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 stakes in this election could not be higher," he added. "There are extreme and dangerous voices at work in the country — led by Donald Trump — who are determined to divide our nation and take us backward. We cannot let that happen. We’ve come a long way these past four years — with America now having the strongest economy in the world and among the lowest inflation of any major economy. Let’s keep pushing forward. Let’s finish what we started — together.”

The incumbent president will win all 55 of the Palmetto State's delegates on his way to the 1,968 he will need to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Biden defeated long shot challengers Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips in the first official contest of the Democratic presidential primary, giving him a key boost as he seeks to bolster his case for reelection in a likely rematch against former President Trump in November.

Phillips, who was sitting in third place (1.6%) behind Williamson (2%) with more than 75% of the vote counted, sought to make the case that the results pointed to lower enthusiasm for Biden because he fell short of his 2020 primary total — even though Saturday's primary was a far less competitive affair than four years prior.

"I congratulate the President for getting the most votes tonight," the Minnesota congressman said in a statement. "But the lack of voter enthusiasm for a Trump-Biden rematch is being reflected in each and every Democratic primary result this election. Voters are disappointed that they lack options beyond the choice between a threat to the fabric of the nation and a good man who voters want to pass the baton.”

But if voters were indeed "disappointed," as Phillips put it, that didn't translate at the ballot box — Biden claimed more than 96% of the vote with more than three-fourths of the votes counted.

"I'm feeling good about where we are, I really am,” President Biden said at an event at his Delaware campaign headquarters earlier Saturday, citing recent positive polling, including a Quinnipiac poll showing him leading Trump. “Folks are starting to focus in, and the guy we're running against, he's not for anything, he's against everything.”

Biden sought to underscore the seriousness of his likely rematch against Trump: “There’s a lot at stake here, folks. We have an enormous obligation.”

“This is not just a campaign, this is more of a mission," Biden said. "We cannot, we cannot, we cannot lose this campaign, for the good of the country. It’s well beyond me, it’s the good of the country.”

South Carolina was a pivotal state for Biden in the 2020 primary. After bruising defeats in the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucuses, the president made his last stand in the Palmetto State. But thanks to a key endorsement from South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn and support from the state’s Black voters, a majority of the state’s Democratic electorate, Biden won a decisive victory in the state, which helped to rejuvenate his campaign on the way to winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

As president, Biden backed a proposal to shuffle the Democratic primary calendar which put South Carolina first in an effort to better reflect the diversity of the party.  (New Hampshire objected to the proposal and held their primary last month as planned, so Biden was not on the ballot there. He still won decisively, thanks to a concerted write-in campaign, though the state’s delegates will not count toward his nomination.)

Biden, underscoring the importance he placed on the South Carolina contest, campaigned in the state last weekend and dispatched top surrogates to the state, including Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, themselves possible candidates for the 2028 election.

"The president, the vice president, [first lady Jill Biden], and [second gentleman Doug Emhoff] have been in the state almost every week of the month of January," Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison said in an interview with Spectrum News earlier Saturday. 

"They've been there multiple times talking to people, connecting with people, chatting with them about the things that they have done and accomplished, but also about what they want the president and the vice president to do in the next four years," Harrison continued. "And I think that is a big win and a big achievement for them, because it allows them to get their campaign, that muscle memory going again, and allows them to go out and connect with voters, and to hear about the things that are really important to them."

Harris, campaigning Friday at a get-out-the-vote rally at South Carolina State University, a historically Black institution, sought to sell the electorate on their administration's accomplishments while taking aim at their presumptive November opponent: former President Donald Trump.

"In 2020, in the height of an historic pandemic, in the midst of so much loss and uncertainty, the people of South Carolina showed up to vote. You convinced your friends and your family members and neighbors and co-workers of the power of their vote, and the power they have when they show up to vote," Harris said. "And it is because of that work that Joe Biden is President of the United States, and I am the first woman, and first black woman, to be vice president of the United States of America."

"Former President Trump has made clear time and time again, his fight is not for the people — he fights for himself," Harris later said. "He openly talks about his intention to weaponize the Department of Justice. He openly says that he is quote proud that he overturned Roe v. Wade, proud that he took the freedom of choice from millions of American women. For years, the former president has stoked the fires of hate and bigotry and racism and xenophobia for his own power and political gain."

The next contest in the Democratic primary is on Tuesday in Nevada, the same day as the Republican contest, which former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will be on the ballot for — though not the Nevada caucuses, which are two days later and former President Trump is participating in. President Biden is set to hold a rally on Sunday in Las Vegas ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

Republicans, meanwhile, will hold their presidential primary in the Palmetto State on Feb. 24. A recent Monmouth University-Washington Post poll has Trump leading Haley, a former two-term governor of the state, 58% to 32% among potential GOP primary voters.

Spectrum News' David Mendez contributed to this report.