Former Vice President Joe Biden promised to win the South Carolina primary at the tenth Democrat presidential debate on Tuesday.
Biden, who has seen his chances at capturing the Democrat nomination diminish after back-to-back losses in the first three early primary contests, was asked if he would drop out if he lost South Carolina.
“I don’t expect anything, I came [here] to earn the vote,” Biden said, asserting that he “will win South Carolina.”
The former vice president’s pledge comes as polling shows Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer surging in South Carolina. A new poll released by NBC News/Marist indicates that Biden still leads the field, but narrowly with 27 percent of the vote. The same poll found Sanders in second place, albeit in the margin of error, with 23 percent. Steyer, who by most standards has seen the biggest jump in support among South Carolina voters in recent weeks, was in third place at 15 percent.
The results do not bode well for the former vice president, who once had a 27 point advantage over his competitors in South Carolina. Complicating matters is that Biden’s campaign is short on money and struggling to prove its arguments about electability still hold up after a bruising flops in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.