Story highlights South Carolina Democrats voted Saturday for their presidential primary pick 
 
 In 2008, 55% of voters were black, but now African Americans made up more than six in 10 voters 
 
 Washington (CNN) African-American voters are making up a larger portion of the South Carolina Democratic primary electorate than they did in 2008, and a larger percentage voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, according to exit polls conducted Saturday. 
 
 In 2008, 55% of voters were black, but now African-Americans made up 61% of voters. In 2008, 78% of black voters went with Obama and 19% backed Clinton, according to exit polls at the time. But this time, 84% of black voters went for Clinton and 16% went for Sanders . 
 
 Sanders won New Hampshire with strong support of white voters, who made up 93% of the electorate there. But white voters only made up 35% of voters in South Carolina on Saturday, according to the polls, and Clinton beat him with that group 54%-46%. 
 
 Democratic voters also said the economy was the most important issue facing the country, with 44% selecting it, compared with 35% of Democrats in Nevada and 33% in New Hampshire who said it was the most important. Half of South Carolinians voting Saturday said they are very worried about the direction of the nation's economy, while just 29% of voters in New Hampshire agreed. 
 
 Moderate to conservative Democrats also made up a larger portion of the electorate in South Carolina than in previous states, according to exit polls, with 46% of voters identifying that way. Only 32% of Democrats in Iowa and 30% in Nevada identified as moderate to conservative. 
 
 Read More ||||| Hillary Clinton vanquished Bernie Sanders — and her own ghosts — in the South Carolina Democratic primary Saturday night, notching her second straight early-state victory for a burst of momentum heading into Super Tuesday. 
 
 With nearly all precincts reporting, Clinton led Sanders 74 percent to 26 percent. 
 
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 Celebrating her victory with supporters in Columbia, Clinton made it clear: The campaign is going national, and she is going after Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. 
 
 "Despite what you hear, we don't need to make America great again," she said. "America has never stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again. Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers." 
 
 In another unmistakable contrast with Trump's belittling of opponents and dire warnings about America being in decline, Clinton added, “I know it sometimes seems a little odd for someone running for president in these days and this time to say we need more love and kindness in America. But I’m telling you, from the bottom my heart, we do. We do. We have so much to look forward to. There’s no doubt in my mind that America’s best years are ahead of us.” 
 
 Sanders congratulated Clinton before holding a campaign rally in Rochester, Minnesota. “In politics, on a given night, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,” he told reporters after getting off his chartered jet. “Tonight we lost. ... (On) Tuesday over 800 delegates are at stake and I intend to win many, many of them." 
 
 Sanders played down his defeat during the rally, focusing on his campaign message about economic inequality and the public's need to get engaged in politics. In continuing his discourse about campaign contributions, Sanders again called upon Clinton to release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. 
 
 Though the win was expected in a state long seen as safe terrain for the former secretary of state thanks to her solid support among African-American voters, it was nonetheless welcome for Clinton after her experience in the Palmetto State eight years ago. Barack Obama romped to victory against her that year, shattered any vestige of inevitability for the former first lady. But there would be no repeat this time against Sanders, whose shortcomings among key constituencies on the left were further exposed as Clinton solidified her status as the Democratic presidential frontrunner. 
 
 On Saturday, African-American voters in South Carolina supported Clinton in bigger numbers — 87 percent to 13 percent, according to exit polls — than they did Obama when the two squared off in 2008. In that contest, Obama won 78 percent of black voters. 
 
 With the outcome all but preordained, both candidates spent Election Day in Super Tuesday states — Clinton in Alabama, and Sanders in Minnesota and Texas. Clinton, however, returned to South Carolina on Saturday evening for her victory party. 
 
 Sanders was ready to just move on. 
 
 The candidates and their surrogates spent the majority of the week leading up to the first southern Democratic primary jabbing at each others' records and, in the case of Sanders, appealing to black voters to take a closer look at his record and policies on economic inequality. 
 
 The Clinton campaign, meanwhile, pressed its advantage against Sanders, attempting to link his vote against a 1990s background check bill to the June shooting at a Charleston church that killed nine people. Despite his occasional opposition to gun control measures during his time in Congress, Sanders has described himself as a strong advocate for stricter gun laws, especially for someone representing a rural state. 
 
 Sanders seemed to downplay South Carolina's importance, saying after his narrow loss in Nevada that his campaign had an "excellent chance" on Super Tuesday "to win many of those states." Speaking to reporters in Kansas City, Missouri, on Wednesday, Sanders insisted his campaign was not writing off South Carolina, but his light presence in the state and subsequent trips to Oklahoma, Ohio and Illinois indicated otherwise. 
 
 The Vermont senator held his final event in South Carolina on Friday evening, noting his progress in the state since he started campaigning there but effectively lowering expectations for himself. 
 
 The disparity between the two candidates was reflected in their top surrogates: Sanders had the rapper Killer Mike stumping for him, while Clinton deployed South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking black Democrat and third-most senior Democrat overall in the House of Representatives. 
 
 Sanders tried to tie his economic message to criminal justice reform and police discrimination against African Americans. But he was also forced to try and explain a remark he made the previous week that Clinton was embracing Obama to attract African-American voters. “I’ve been at the president’s side time and time again," Sanders said. 
 
 But former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, a Clinton backer, said Sanders was swimming upstream among black voters. "When you watch Bernie, it’s like he’s taking a cram course in how to communicate in churches, it doesn’t feel natural," Hodges said. 
 
 Indeed, though Clinton lost the state to Obama in 2008 after Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" remark — a reference to Obama's record on the Iraq War that many black voters perceived as a jab at his candidacy itself — the Democratic electorate emphatically moved on. 
 
 Gabriel Debenedetti contributed reporting from Rochester, Minnesota. ||||| The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine 
 
 This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds) 
 
 The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, right, is embraced by an audience member while posing for a photo at a campaign event at Miles College Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, in Fairfield, Ala. (AP... (Associated Press) 
 
 COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Hillary Clinton sailed to a commanding victory over Bernie Sanders in Saturday's South Carolina primary, drawing overwhelming support from the state's black Democrats and putting her in strong position as the race barrels toward Super Tuesday's crucial contests. 
 
 Clinton's win provided an important boost for her campaign — and a moment to wipe away bitter memories of her loss to Barack Obama in South Carolina eight years ago. 
 
 "To South Carolina, to the volunteers at the heart of our campaign, to the supporters who power it: thank you," Clinton wrote on Twitter. At a campaign victory party in Columbia, supporters broke into raucous cheers as the race was called in Clinton's favor. 
 
 Black voters powered Clinton to victory, with 8 in 10 voting for her. The former secretary of state also won most women and voters aged 30 and older, according to early exit polls. 
 
 Clinton's victory came at the end of a day that saw Republican candidates firing insults at each other from Super Tuesday states. Donald Trump, working to build an insurmountable lead, was campaigning in Arkansas with former rival Chris Christie and calling Marco Rubio a "light little nothing;" Ted Cruz was asking parents in Atlanta if they would be pleased if their children spouted profanities like the brash billionaire, and Rubio was mocking Trump as a "con artist" with "the worst spray tan in America." 
 
 Sanders, expecting defeat on Saturday, left South Carolina even before voting finished and turned his attention to some of the states that vote in next Tuesday's delegate-rich contests. He drew 10,000 people to a rally in Austin, a liberal bastion in conservative Texas, the biggest March 1 prize. 
 
 He told the crowd at a Formula One racetrack, "If all of you come out to vote and you bring your friends and your neighbors and your co-workers, we are going to win here in Texas." 
 
 While Sanders spent the end of the week outside of South Carolina, his campaign did invest heavily in the state. He had 200 paid staff on the ground and an aggressive television advertising campaign. 
 
 A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders has energized young people and liberals with his impassioned calls for breaking up Wall Street banks and making tuition free at public colleges and universities. But the senator from Vermont, a state where about 1 percent of the population is black, lacks Clinton's deep ties to the African-American community. 
 
 Exit polls showed 6 in 10 voters in the South Carolina primary were black. About 7 in 10 said they wanted the next president to continue Obama's policies, and only about 20 percent wanted a more liberal course of action, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks. 
 
 Clinton's sweeping victory suggested South Carolina voters had put aside any lingering tensions from her heated 2008 contest with Obama. Former President Bill Clinton made statements during that campaign that were seen by some, including influential South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, as questioning the legitimacy of the black presidential contender. 
 
 This time around, Clyburn endorsed Clinton, and her husband was well-received as he traveled the state on her behalf. She focused on issues with particular resonance in the black community, including gun violence, and held an emotional event with black mothers whose children died in shootings. 
 
 Clinton's second White House bid lurched to an uneven start, with a narrow victory over Sanders in Iowa and a crushing loss to the senator in New Hampshire. She pulled off a 5-point win over Sanders in last week's Nevada caucus, a crucial victory that helped stem Sanders' momentum. 
 
 Clinton's campaign hopes her strong showing in South Carolina foreshadows similar outcomes in states like Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia that vote Tuesday and have large minority populations. 
 
 Taken together, 865 Democratic delegates are up for grabs in the Super Tuesday contests in 11 states and American Samoa. 
 
 Because Democrats apportion delegates proportionally, Sanders is simply hoping to stay close to Clinton in the South. But he's focusing most of his attention on states in the Midwest and Northeast, including his home state of Vermont. 
 
 Sanders, a fierce opponent of super PACs and high-dollar campaign fundraising, has built a massive network of small donors and has the money to stay in the race deep into the spring. Still, Clinton's campaign sees a chance to build enough of a delegate lead to put the race out of reach during the sprint through March. 
 
 Going into South Carolina, Clinton had just a one-delegate edge over Sanders. However, she also has a massive lead among superdelegates, the Democratic Party leaders who can vote for the candidate of their choice at this summer's national convention, regardless of how their states vote. 
 
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 Pace reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey in Austin, Texas, and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Julie Pace and Lisa Lerer on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and http://twitter.com/llerer
– The least suspenseful primary of the 2016 election year is in the books, with Hillary Clinton cruising to an easy win over Bernie Sanders in South Carolina. The AP and CNN called the race as soon as the polls closed at 7pm. Strong turnout by African-Americans sealed the victory for Clinton, who dominated among those voters and was up by nearly 50 points overall with most of the vote counted. The win bodes well for her in several Super Tuesday states with similar demographics. Sanders had essentially given up on the state this week, not even mentioning South Carolina in a campaign appearance earlier Saturday in Texas, notes Politico. "Tomorrow this campaign goes national," said Clinton after the race was called. "We are not taking anything, and we are not taking anyone, for granted."