South Carolina saved Joe Biden’s campaign. The rest of the field had a night they’d like to forget.

A presidential contest that has already had its share of unexpected results received another jolt Saturday, when Joe Biden won a surprisingly easy victory in South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary. The former vice president’s margin was so impressive that the networks were able to call the state for him when the polls closed at 7 p.m.

Many of Biden’s opponents have already moved onto the far larger slate of contests known as Super Tuesday, trying to move on from their disappointing finishes in South Carolina. But for some of them, the state’s results offer a stark warning about the viability of their campaigns, especially for those candidates who have yet to win over voters of color.

Here are six takeaways from the South Carolina primary:

Biden’s Big Win

Less than a week ago, Joe Biden no longer looked like a sure victor in South Carolina.

Things changed fast for the former vice president’s campaign — and just in time for his supporters.

Biden’s commanding victory in South Carolina vaults him back into the top-tier of the Democratic field, helping him shake off a deeply disappointing start to his campaign and positioning him as the top candidate among moderate Democrats to stop the frontrunning Bernie Sanders from becoming the nominee.

“Just days ago the press and pundits had declared this candidacy dead,” Biden said at his victory party in South Carolina. “Now, thanks to all of you, the heart of the Democratic Party, we’ve just won and we’ve won big because of you. And we are very much alive.”

He still faces steep challenges to win the nomination, none more immediately daunting than performing well in a slate of Super Tuesday contests where he reportedly has little campaign organization. But to even be viable after Saturday is an achievement for a campaign that critics charged was on the verge of collapse after a humiliating fourth-place finish in Iowa and fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.

Sanders, in fact, began the week after his huge victory in Nevada signaling an intention to compete in South Carolina in hopes of pulling off an upset win.

Instead, Biden’s unwavering support among African-American voters — buoyed by a key endorsement this week from Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina — led him to victory. The additional good news for his campaign is that his success with those voters bodes well for his support with black voters in southern Super Tuesday states, including Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

Bernie’s Latino-African-American split

The first month of the Democratic primary demonstrated that Sanders has made significant gains with some voters of color. But Saturday’s results were a reminder that for all his progress, he still has work to do.

In a result that felt eerily similar to his defeat here four years ago to Hillary Clinton, Sanders slumped to a distant second place against Biden due to his weak support with black voters, especially older African-Americans.

Exit polls from the state reported Biden won more than four times the support among black voters than Sanders, 64 percent to 15 percent. In 2016, Sanders won 14 percent of the black vote in the state, according to exit polls, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 86 percent.

Sanders’s huge victory in Nevada came in large part because of his support among Latino voters. Saturday’s results in South Carolina suggest he won’t make similar progress with African-Americans.

Biden Runs Into Bloomberg

Biden’s case to become the prime alternative to Sanders would look much more convincing if not for Bloomberg.

The billionaire New Yorker looks like a roadblock to the one-on-one fight Biden’s team is craving with Sanders.

As votes poured in on Saturday night, a Bloomberg adviser summarily dismissed any notion that he would consider ending his campaign to unite around Biden before Super Tuesday.

“Zero chatter about that. No way,” texted a Bloomberg aide, pointing to the candidate’s planned three-minute nationally televised address on the coronavirus on Sunday. “Funny, since we’ve been saying for a few weeks that it’s a two-person race: us and Bernie.”

Bloomberg’s $500 millon advertising onslaught will finally be put to the test on Tuesday, when he competes for the first time against Biden’s national goodwill and Sanders’ grassroots movement.

More precisely, it’ll be a test of Bloomberg’s money -- saturating airwaves and digital spaces -- against Biden’s newfound momentum -- derived from a victory in a single state.

Biden had a line ready for both of his main adversaries Saturday, gently pointing out that neither Sanders nor Bloomberg has the history with the party that he does.

“If the Democrats want a nominee who’s a Democrat -- a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat, join us,” Biden said.

Onward To Super Tuesday

Other than Biden, the rest of the candidates were eager to put South Carolina in their rearview mirrors.

Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar had all vacated the state hours before results began tallying, the first indication they were expecting rough nights. Instead of holding election night parties that would have little to celebrate, they turned their attention to states voting on Super Tuesday, now just three days away.

The Sanders campaign views South Carolina as a minor blip that will wash away in 72 hours when the Vermont senator is well-positioned to roll up victories in a majority of the 16 contests, including the largest state on the map, California.

In that state alone -- which Sanders will visit on Sunday -- a double-digit victory could mean winning north of 250 delegates. What’s more, polls show Biden currently below the 15 percent threshold necessary for delegates. But the former vice president’s campaign is pinning hopes that media attention surrounding his overwhelming South Carolina performance will lift him into second place over Warren and Michael Bloomberg.

The road ahead looks considerably more bleak for Warren and Klobuchar, each who could lose their home states to Sanders on Tuesday, effectively ending their campaigns.

And Buttigieg’s campaign is also betting on a district-by-district delegate slog that won’t immediately overtake Sanders, but simply narrow his margins.

“Super Tuesday will have a significant winnowing effect,” said a Buttigieg advisor on a conference call with reporters ahead of the South Carolina results. “We certainly expect to see people drop out after that.”

But Super Tuesday will distribute 1,500 delegates -- a third of the total -- meaning waiting until even next week to consolidate around a moderate candidate might be too late.

Buttigieg Heading in the Wrong Direction

Buttigieg’s first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses (in the delegate count, at least) may have been the pinnacle of his campaign. It has been headed in the wrong direction since, with a second place finish in New Hampshire, third place in Nevada, and now what looks to be fourth in South Carolina. He continues to struggle with voters of color, particularly African-Americans. In Nevada, exit polls indicated he won 2% of black voters. In South Carolina, he appeared to have won about 3%.

Biden’s resurgence and Bloomberg’s looming presence further complicate the outlook for the Buttigieg campaign on Super Tuesday and beyond. Of the 14 states voting on March 3, Buttigieg is not leading in polls anywhere, but his campaign has been targeting states and congressional districts in a deliberate way, hoping to pick up delegates in places such as Turlock, Calif. and Arlington, Va. “I am determined to earn every vote on the road ahead,” he told supporters at an event in Raleigh, N.C.

That will make it harder for Biden or Bloomberg or any other self-styled Sanders alternative to make up the delegate gap with the democratic socialist from Vermont. And it could make Buttigieg a factor if the Democratic nominee ends up getting chosen at a brokered convention this July.

Prospects Dim for Warren and Klobuchar

Both Warren and Klobuchar breathed life into their campaigns with attention-grabbing debate performances in February -- Warren in Nevada, Klobuchar in New Hampshire. And while it led to a surge in fundraising, those break-out moments on the national stage have not translated into major gains on election night.

Now, after single-digit finishes in South Carolina on Saturday night, the uncomfortable reality facing both women’s campaigns is, there’s virtually no logical path to victory. Going into Saturday’s primary vote, Warren was sitting on eight delegates, Klobuchar on seven. They will not pick up any in South Carolina.

“I would be the first to say the first four contests haven’t gone exactly as I hoped,” Warren acknowledged at a rally in Houston on Saturday night. But she insisted, again, that her campaign is “built for the long haul.”

But looking ahead to Super Tuesday, neither Warren or Klobuchar are projected to add many delegates outside of their home states, Massachusetts and Minnesota, respectively. Warren isn’t even leading the most recent polls in Massachusetts — Sanders is. And he narrowly trails Klobuchar in Minnesota. The two senators are hopscotching around the country this weekend trying to gin up some late-breaking momentum for Tuesday. But after tonight, the risk of an embarrassing loss at home grows significantly. Such a result would likely put a definitive end to their campaigns.