Second, for all the Democrats holding out hope that Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire carpetbagger carrying the weight of his horrific racial history, could muscle his way into the races and force voters into submission and amnesia, South Carolina waved a giant red flag.

Bloomberg wasn’t on the ballot in the state, but voters at the polls were still asked their opinion of him along with their opinion of the other candidates. A whopping 66 percent said that they had an unfavorable opinion of Bloomberg. That was higher than the unfavorable rating of any other candidate. No other candidate’s unfavorable rating crossed the 50 percent mark. Only 26 percent of voters in the state had a favorable opinion of Bloomberg.

Of course, Bloomberg didn’t saturate the airwaves with his propaganda in South Carolina the way that he has done in Super Tuesday states, so results this week could be different. But Democrats should be extremely concerned that when voters are left to discover a candidate on their own, through the press and their own research, they come away with such a repulsed impression.

Third, people can like you as a person but simply not believe that you are the best candidate. Pete Buttigieg’s candidacy provided an example of this. Before he dropped out of the race Sunday, a plurality of South Carolina voters (49 percent) said that they had a favorable opinion of the former mayor, but only 7 percent thought he best understood the concerns of racial/ethnic minorities.

Trying to replicate the Obama victory is a fool’s errand. That was a lightning strike. It won’t hit the same spot twice.

Finally, there is a religious split that we should track and deeply consider. In South Carolina, 83 percent of voters said they attend religious services occasionally or more often than that. Biden won a majority of those voters. Sanders won only 17 percent of them. Sanders did, however, win a plurality of the 17 percent of voters who said they never attend religious services.

On this metric, South Carolina matches up rather well with the country as a whole. In 2016, 78 percent of voters said that they attended religious services at least a few times a year. The problem was that Donald Trump won those who attended those services most often.