Early numbers suggest Hillary Clinton has scored a big victory in South Carolina

As expect­ed, it took only a few sec­onds fol­low­ing the clos­ing of polls in South Car­oli­na for cable and broad­cast news net­works to project that Hillary Clin­ton had won. Though the actu­al num­bers are still trick­ling in, it looks like Clin­ton has scored an impres­sive vic­to­ry. Present­ly, she has around four-fifths of the vote.

Clin­ton declared vic­to­ry immediately.

“To South Car­oli­na, to the vol­un­teers at the heart of our cam­paign, to the sup­port­ers who pow­er it: thank you. ‑H,” she tweet­ed.

Sanders, mean­while, wast­ed no time con­ced­ing defeat.

“I con­grat­u­late Hillary Clin­ton on her vic­to­ry in South Car­oli­na,” he said in a state­ment. “Let me be clear on one thing tonight. This cam­paign is just begin­ning. We won a deci­sive vic­to­ry in New Hamp­shire. She won a deci­sive vic­to­ry in South Car­oli­na. Now it’s on to Super Tues­day. Our grass­roots polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion is grow­ing state by state, and we won’t stop now.”

Exit polling paid for by mass media out­lets sug­gest that Clin­ton did extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well with black vot­ers, account­ing for her large mar­gins so far.

Sanders did bet­ter with younger vot­ers and white vot­ers, but still lost those demo­graph­ic groups to Clin­ton. He will wind up with a few del­e­gates from South Car­oli­na, but Clin­ton will have a supermajority.

Clin­ton arrived at her vic­to­ry par­ty in high spirits.

Beam­ing, she said: “I am so great­ly appre­cia­tive… Today, you sent a mes­sage. When we stand togeth­er, there is no bar­ri­er too big to break.”

“We are not tak­ing any­thing, or any­body, for grant­ed,” she added, say­ing the time had come to “take the cam­paign national.”

Eight years ago, South Car­oli­na gave Barack Oba­ma a big vic­to­ry in the 2008 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial con­test, after Clin­ton had beat­en him in New Hamp­shire. This time around, Clin­ton lost New Hamp­shire, but won in South Car­oli­na. That’s a trade her cam­paign can live with, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that South Car­oli­na has more del­e­gates at stake than either Iowa, New Hamp­shire, or Nevada.

UPDATE, 6:04 PM: It’s a shel­lack­ing, no question.