Clinton Smothers Sanders in South Carolina

r secretary of state heads into Super Tuesday having won three of four contests.

Hillary Clinton's victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary Saturday was due in part strong support from African-American voters

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Hillary Clinton rolled up an emphatic victory over Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary Saturday, powered by overwhelming support from African-American voters who spurned her eight years ago.

Clinton was on pace toward a rout upward of 40 percentage points, according to early returns. One exit poll showed she carried black voters 65 and older by an astonishing tally of 96 percent to 3 percent for Sanders.

The resounding double-digit victory in the first contest in the South solidifies Clinton as the durable front-runner for her party's nomination, having won three of the first four nominating elections.

Perhaps more significantly, it sends the former secretary of state into next week's Super Tuesday contests with a head of steam and places new pressure on the Vermont senator to demonstrate he's a candidate with broad national appeal who can attract minority voters.

"Today, you sent a message. In America when we stand together, there is no barrier too big to break," she said, fighting to speak over thunderous applause at her victory rally in Columbia, South Carolina. "Tomorrow, this campaign goes national."

South Carolina always posed a formidable hurdle for Sanders, who lacked the intimate connection with voters here that Clinton had established and nurtured over years. Even before she campaigned here in the 2008 primary race, her husband, Bill Clinton, had forged a special relationship with residents during his presidency.

While Clinton kept a robust campaign schedule here during the final week before the vote, Sanders spent most of his time outside the Palmetto State, campaigning through the South and Midwest. On Saturday, Sanders held two rallies in Texas and was in Rochester, Minnesota, when results were being tallied.

"We won a decisive victory in New Hampshire. She won a decisive victory in South Carolina. Now it's on to Super Tuesday," Sanders said in a subdued statement.

He now looks to Tuesday – when the largest amount of delegates are up for grabs this cycle – to shift the momentum being harnessed by Clinton. The next round of contests includes 11 states. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia will hold primaries, while Colorado and Minnesota will conduct caucuses.

Clinton is favored in the Southern states and holds double-digit polling leads in Virginia and Texas, where a combined 317 delegates are at stake. Sanders, on the other hand, sees his best chances for victories in the two caucuses as well as his home state of Vermont.

The closest Super Tuesday election is in Massachusetts, where polling shows just a few percentage points separate Sanders and Clinton.

If Sanders fails to win anywhere but his home state, it may spell the beginning of the end for his insurgent challenge to Clinton, even though he will collect delegates through proportional allocation.

Added Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to President Barack Obama on Twitter, "absent Sanders dramatically expanding his base on Super Tuesday, the Dem nomination fight is over on Wednesday AM.""She will roll him over Tuesday based on the margin here," Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from South Carolina, told MSNBC.

But with 53 delegates assigned to the Democratic national convention, South Carolina is the biggest prize of the 2016 nominating fight so far – and Clinton thumped Sanders in every region of the state.

She even drew a greater percentage of African-Americans to the polls than candidate Barack Obama did in 2008. Exit polls showed that 61 percent of Saturday's vote was comprised of African-Americans. That number was 55 percent in 2008. She won blacks 87 percent to 13 percent.

At every turn, Clinton campaigned on bolstering the legacy of Obama, a promise voters were drawn to. Seventy percent of Democratic primary participants in South Carolina said they wanted to see Obama's policies continued, compared to 19 percent who indicated they favored a more liberal path forward.

In 2008, one of her worst margins of defeat to Obama occurred in Williamsburg County – a poor, rural, black area in the state's low country. Clinton got thumped by 57 points. This year, it was a complete reversal: She took 89 percent of the vote in that county to Sanders' 11 percent.

But Clinton did not take much time to revel in her overwhelming victory, telling her audience, "We are going to compete for every vote in every state. We are not taking anything and we're not taking anyone for granted."

She congratulated Sanders' on running a terrific campaign and instead made a not-so-subtle reference to GOP front-runner Donald Trump.