Speak­ing in Harlem on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 16, Hillary Clin­ton unveiled to the nation her $125 bil­lion plan to com­bat sys­temic racism and revive poor, non-white com­mu­ni­ties. But the most impor­tant group she was address­ing may have been African Amer­i­cans vot­ing in the South Car­oli­na pri­ma­ry on Feb­ru­ary 27. Clinton’s cam­paign has long seen them as a polit­i­cal safe­ty net if she stum­bled at the start of the nom­i­nat­ing sea­son, as she did with her vir­tu­al tie in Iowa and a big loss in New Hamp­shire — although she began to regain her foot­ing with her Neva­da victory.

'I knew Bernie because he was always for the union. He always supported our issues. But it sealed the deal when I found out that Bernie was in the civil rights movement.'

Sen. Bernie Sanders has inten­si­fied his own fight for South Car­oli­na and for the black vote. In Novem­ber 2015, he trailed Clin­ton there by 50 points, accord­ing to Real Clear Pol­i­tics’ poll aggre­ga­tor. By mid-Feb­ru­ary, he had closed the gap to 24 points. While Clin­ton was speak­ing in Harlem, Sanders was speak­ing to a group of black min­is­ters in Charleston about the need to reform police, pris­ons and the entire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Two days lat­er, he reaf­firmed his plans for address­ing black com­mu­ni­ty needs in a Wash­ing­ton meet­ing with lead­ers of nine his­toric civ­il rights groups.

Yet two days ahead of the pri­ma­ry, elec­tion ana­lyst Nate Sil­ver gives Sanders a less than 1 per­cent chance of win­ning South Car­oli­na. Brett Bursey, direc­tor of the South Car­oli­na Pro­gres­sive Net­work, sizes up the prospects only a bit more opti­misti­cal­ly: ​“If there were six months until the pri­ma­ry, I think Bernie could win.”

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber, how­ev­er, that win­ning or los­ing a spe­cif­ic state isn’t as impor­tant as the slow accu­mu­la­tion of del­e­gates—and because of that, mar­gins matter.

In Silver’s pro­jec­tions, if Clin­ton won South Car­oli­na by 11 points, she would be on a path to a tie. To achieve that, Sanders would need to beat the mid-Feb­ru­ary polling pro­jec­tions of 24 points by anoth­er 13 points.

Stump­ing for Sanders

If Sanders is able to tight­en the gap in South Car­oli­na fur­ther on Elec­tion Day, it will be due to a much larg­er field oper­a­tion in South Car­oli­na than Clin­ton has mus­tered, and to a grow­ing ros­ter of black politi­cians, move­ment lead­ers and intel­lec­tu­als lin­ing up behind him.

Each can­di­date has deployed sur­ro­gates to appeal to black vot­ers — for exam­ple, civ­il rights icon and Con­gress­man John Lewis is stump­ing for Clin­ton, and for­mer NAACP pres­i­dent Ben Jeal­ous for Sanders. But the Sanders cam­paign has effec­tive­ly used many ​“ordi­nary” black sup­port­ers, politi­cians, move­ment lead­ers and black intel­lec­tu­als in ads and in speech­es. For­mer Ohio Demo­c­ra­t­ic state sen­a­tor Nina Turn­er, who once sup­port­ed Clin­ton, is now cam­paign­ing for Sanders. He also has the back­ing of Eri­ca Gar­ner, the daugh­ter of Eric Gar­ner, a vic­tim of a stran­gle­hold by New York police whose last words — ​“I can’t breathe” — became a ral­ly­ing cry of the Black Lives Mat­ter movement.

“We are clos­ing the gap,” says South Car­oli­na state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ter­ry Alexan­der, a Clin­ton sup­port­er in 2008, now a lead­ing black sup­port­er of Sanders. ​“We’re mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. It’s his mes­sage and how he gives peo­ple hope. Clin­ton is old style, change bit by bit.”

Sanders’ cam­paign has 10 offices in South Car­oli­na with 240 staff, 80 per­cent of them African-Amer­i­can, com­pared to two offices with 14 full-time staff for Clin­ton, backed up by nine small get-out-the-vote offices.

Beyond recruit­ing vol­un­teers from with­in South Car­oli­na, Sanders is count­ing on some key back­ers from across the coun­try — such as Martese Chism, a nurse for more than 23 years at the John H. Stroger, Jr. Hos­pi­tal of Cook Coun­ty, Illi­nois, and a mem­ber of Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed, the first major nation­al union to endorse Sanders.

While Sanders was speak­ing, Chism was rid­ing through South Car­oli­na in Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed’s red #BernieBus, drum­ming up sup­port for him.

Chism is also the great-grand­daugh­ter of a grass­roots civ­il rights leader, Bir­dia Keglar. In 1966, Keglar was return­ing home from Jack­son, Miss., with four oth­er civ­il rights sup­port­ers after tes­ti­fy­ing before Robert F. Kennedy about vot­ing rights vio­la­tions. White racists forced them off the road and beat and tor­tured them, severe­ly injur­ing two of the three men and killing the two women in the car — includ­ing Keglar, who was decapitated.

With such a pow­er­ful per­son­al con­nec­tion, Chism says she’s felt a call­ing to work for civ­il rights since she was 5 years old. That’s what brought her out to cam­paign for Sanders.

“I knew Bernie because he was always for the union,” she says. ​“He always sup­port­ed our issues. But it sealed the deal when I found out that Bernie was in the civ­il rights movement.”

As she knocks on doors, she says, she’s found that many South Car­olini­ans had not thought about the pri­ma­ry and knew lit­tle about the can­di­dates. ​“I wouldn’t say they’ve changed their minds about Hillary,” she said, ​“but they were look­ing for a fight­er, and they have one now ”

A debate with­in the Inter­na­tion­al Long­shore­men’s Asso­ci­a­tion Local 1422 in Charleston, a major East Coast port, is one sign that black vot­ers are still in play. The influ­en­tial, pre­dom­i­nant­ly African-Amer­i­can local has 600 mem­bers. In Octo­ber, local pres­i­dent Ken Riley, endorsed Clin­ton as the prac­ti­cal choice — the can­di­date who could win and get things done. But then Charles Brave, Jr., a rank-and-file mem­ber of Local 1422 and vice-pres­i­dent of the state AFL-CIO, began drum­ming up sup­port for Sanders with­in the local. He believes that now, if mem­bers were to take a vote, a clear major­i­ty would sup­port Sanders.

The young and the working-class

There are fac­tors beyond the black vote that could sway the race. The South Car­oli­na AFL-CIO has tak­en no posi­tion because it is barred from doing so by nation­al rules (though in June 2015 they unsuc­cess­ful­ly urged the nation­al AFL-CIO to endorse Sanders). But state AFL-CIO Pres­i­dent Erin McK­ee says that South Carolina’s small labor move­ment has been work­ing hard to make mem­bers and oth­er work­ers aware of the impor­tance of the pri­ma­ry. State AFL-CIO Pres­i­dent Emer­i­tus Don­na Dewitt thinks that turnout will increase among work­ers who are dis­en­gaged from elec­toral pol­i­tics. Some of them may cast their votes for Trump, join­ing the sig­nif­i­cant share of the state’s union mem­bers who nor­mal­ly vote Repub­li­can. But DeWitt believes many work­ers who had giv­en up on pol­i­tics will be turn­ing to Sanders because of his pro-union, class-ori­ent­ed polit­i­cal appeal.

Also, as in oth­er states, Sanders has a strong, if hard to esti­mate, appeal with stu­dents and oth­er young peo­ple. Young peo­ple vote less often than old­er peo­ple, but have been com­ing out in near-record num­bers this pri­ma­ry sea­son, sec­ond only to 2008, when the huge youth turnout helped pro­pel Oba­ma to office.

Amber Lay, 24, and Ash­ley Craw­ford, 28, show the poten­tial for Sanders to appeal to youth even in the con­ser­v­a­tive South. They recent­ly moved to Charleston, S.C., from their small, rur­al home­town in Alaba­ma after fin­ish­ing col­lege. They have big­ger career plans but are get­ting by with pre­car­i­ous ser­vice-sec­tor jobs — dog groom­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty work. They grew up in con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can, fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian, ​“mid­dle class” homes — a mid­dle class they now see as threat­ened in their lifetimes.

“They’re ​‘Bible thumpers,’ ” Lay said of her home­town as we chat­ted at a sub­ur­ban laun­dro­mat in Octo­ber. ​“As long as it can be twist­ed into being Bib­li­cal, they’ll vote for it.”

Col­lege life and edu­ca­tion helped them to think more inde­pen­dent­ly, they said, and they grew more con­scious of both racism — the moti­va­tion behind much crit­i­cism of Oba­ma, whom they sup­port­ed — and sex­ism. Now they favor Sanders because he is a stronger advo­cate for issues that mean a lot to them: such as equal­i­ty (with regard to race, gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and eco­nom­ics) and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. ​“There is too much focus on [Clin­ton] being a woman,” Lay said. “[Sanders is] for a high­er min­i­mum wage,” Craw­ford said. ​“He’s been inde­pen­dent. He seems very proac­tive on envi­ron­men­tal issues. That’s a hot top­ic for me and Amber.”

A surge in youth votes, if added to the left­ward shift already under­way dur­ing the Oba­ma years, could add to the momen­tum towards Sanders in the final days of the campaign.

Even if he does not win South Car­oli­na, which would be a remark­ably unlike­ly accom­plish­ment, Sanders may do well enough to plau­si­bly claim that he has reduced parts of Clinton’s ​“fire­wall” to a pile of rub­ble that has felt the Bern.