The Daily Kos Elections guide to the South Carolina Democratic primary

Thanks to South Carolina’s unusual decision to have their Republican primary one week and their Democratic primary the next week, now we’re on to the sequel, SOUTH CAROLINA II: VOTE HARDER. The Democratic primary will take place on Saturday, Feb. 27, with polls closing at 7 pm ET … and at this point, it doesn’t seem to offer much suspense as to who’ll take first place.  Hillary Clinton is currently leading Bernie Sanders by a 58-34 margin according to Huffington Post Pollster’s aggregate.

If you’ve been paying close attention, though, doubtlessly you’ve had it hammered into you that this is a race about accruing delegates, not simply about who wins the most states. South Carolina is the biggest prize so far … we’re finally up into the realm of the “medium-sized” states … though it only pales compared with some of the truly big states that’ll be contested next week on Super Tuesday. South Carolina has 53 pledged delegates that will be decided on Saturday (compared with 44 that were awarded in Iowa).

All the delegates in South Carolina are awarded proportionately … the “winner-take-all” dynamic is limited to the Republican side … and while there’s a 15 percent viability threshold, with only two candidates, neither of them will fail to hit that mark. Thirty-five of the delegates will be allocated at the congressional district level, meaning the remaining 18 are statewide: 11 at-large and 7 pledged PLEOs (“party leaders and elected officials” … those, however are different from the "unpledged PLEOs," whom you better know as "superdelegates").