South Carolina primary 2024: Trump projected to win, Haley vows to stay in the race

After Trump's New Hampshire primary victory, political commentators noted that he made history as a modern-era non-incumbent winning both major early contests – Iowa and New Hampshire. But while it's obviously true that he's not the sitting president, is it really fair to call Trump a non-incumbent when it comes to the dynamics of the primary race?

In some senses, Trump has campaigned like an incumbent. He refused to participate in any of the primary debates. He uses some of the visual trappings of the presidency, like a modified version of the presidential seal, in public appearances. And he acts like the leader of his party. After his allies played a role in pressuring Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel to step down, Trump is reportedly looking into replacing her with someone more loyal to him — possibly even his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. As Trump's preferences and personal brand increasingly dominate the party, and he continues to barrel toward winning the nomination, his influence over the GOP seems very much like what an incumbent president might expect to wield.

But thinking of him this way raises very different expectations for the nomination contest. As a candidate in an open race, Trump has done very well against a field of highly qualified opponents. But unlike most incumbents, he's attracted a lot of challengers. Almost half of Iowa caucusgoers chose someone else, and Trump won by 11 percentage points in New Hampshire. These results would be concerning for an incumbent president. (Imagine the narratives we'd see if Biden was facing a field of strong primary competitors who siphoned off more than a third of the vote in early states.) Based on those numbers alone, it may look like Trump's challengers managed to do just well enough to suggest that if anti-Trump forces in the GOP could just coordinate, they might have been able to compete with him. But of course, tonight could put a fine point on the reality that that opportunity has passed and, incumbent or not, Trump is still in the driver's seat of the GOP.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor

538's research team, Mary Radcliffe and Cooper Burton, has been collecting data on how many campaign events each presidential candidate has held in each state, and one consistent pattern has been that Trump holds a lot fewer events than more retail-politics-focused candidates like Haley (and, before they dropped out, Ramaswamy, DeSantis, etc.).

That has certainly been the case in South Carolina. From their respective campaign launches through Friday, Haley had held 52 public, in-person campaign events all over the Palmetto State, while Trump had held only eight — mostly in major urban areas like Columbia and metro Charleston.

Of course, it may not matter. Political science research on the impact of campaign events is mixed, and the polls indicate that Trump is cruising to an easy win tonight despite not campaigning very hard here.

—Nathaniel Rakich and Amina Brown, 538

Of the three longstanding early state contests — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — the last of that group may actually be the best at indicating the eventual winner of the GOP nomination.

In the eight contested GOP primaries since 1980, when the state transitioned from a convention system to a primary, the winner of the election has gone on to win the nomination all but once. That aberration came in the topsy-turvy 2012 primary that saw three different Republicans win the first three early states; Southerner Newt Gingrich won South Carolina that year with 40 percent.

It makes sense that South Carolina has a stronger track record than Iowa (three of the eight) and New Hampshire (six of eight). (Nevada joined the early-voting lineup in 2008 and has picked the nominee in two of the three competitive GOP races since.) For starters, it has the advantage of sifting through a significantly winnowed field. It's not uncommon for a half-dozen or more candidates to seriously contest Iowa and New Hampshire, but by the time South Carolina rolls around, it's only the most viable contenders who remain.

But there's also something to be said for South Carolina being more representative of the GOP electorate as a whole. After all, it's the first solidly Republican state to vote — while Iowa and New Hampshire are historically swing states, South Carolina has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980, when the primary began.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Independent voters in South Carolina are much more likely to support Haley than those that identify as Republicans, according to an early February poll conducted by Winthrop University. Among likely GOP primary voters, those who identify as independent were split between Trump and Haley, with 43 percent saying they planned to vote for Trump and 42 percent saying they planned to vote for Haley. Among those who identify as Republicans, 72 percent said they planned to vote for Trump and 24 percent said they planned to vote for Haley.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538