What can we take away from Trump's big Palmetto State victory?
Former President Donald Trump has won the South Carolina Republican primary, ABC News projects. It was a swift and embarrassing defeat for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who rose to political prominence as South Carolina’s governor. Nevertheless, in her concession speech, Haley vowed to continue her campaign into Super Tuesday on March 5.
Throughout the evening, 538 reporters, analysts and contributors broke down the results as they came in with live updates, analysis and commentary. Read our full live blog below.
The polls are now closed in South Carolina, and based on an analysis of the exit polls, ABC News is projecting that Trump has won the state’s Republican primary. We’ll be sticking around for a while yet, though, to see what the exact margin is, how many delegates Trump will win and whether Haley will drop out following this decisive defeat.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
Haley’s nearly 30-point deficit in her home state isn’t for lack of trying — especially when it comes to advertising. As was the case in New Hampshire, Haley and her allies have outspent Trump, and the 13-to-1 disparity is only more striking when juxtaposed with her lack of movement in the polls.
Haley’s campaign has spent $5.8 million on ads in South Carolina, according to AdImpact, which tracks political ad spending. And her allies at Stand for America, the super PAC set up to support her bid, and Americans for Prosperity Action, the Charles Koch-affiliated group that endorsed her last year, have chipped in a combined $10.3 million. The vast majority of that spending ($14.2 million of it) has come in the last six weeks, since the Iowa caucuses. Another anti-Trump group, the Club for Growth PAC Win it Back, spent $1.7 million against the former president last summer.
Trump, meanwhile, has spent just $1.2 million to date — and his allies’ super PACs have barely spent anything. To put that in perspective, Never Back Down, the super PAC formed to support the failed campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has spent three times as much in South Carolina as Trump has — and it hasn’t aired any ads since July of last year.
It’s not a complete surprise that Haley is pouring so much more money into South Carolina. It’s pretty close to a must-win for her at this point, so she’s not well-served by saving her cash for later. But also, as her most recent FEC filings demonstrated, she actually raised more money than Trump in January.
Will that translate into electoral success? The polling says it’s not likely. But if Haley does pull off the upset of the cycle, her massive spending advantage will be a big part of why.
—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections
Back in 2016, won the South Carolina primary by 10 points, garnering 32 percent of the vote. His two main rivals, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, each received about 22 percent, with Rubio finishing second. Yet with a crowded field — three other candidates won between 7 and 8 percent — Trump's showing was good enough to carry all but two counties in the state. He also won every congressional district, allowing him to sweep the state's 50 national convention delegates.
Trump's strongest-performing area was in the state's northeast, where he won about 44 percent of the vote in the Myrtle Beach-Florence media market, which made up close to one-eighth of the state's vote. That region should once again be one of Trump's strongest today: A mid-February poll from The Citadel found him winning around two-thirds of the vote in that media market, and a similarly-timed Suffolk University/USA Today survey found him garnering about 7 in 10 voters in the Pee Dee region, which overlaps much of the same turf. He's also poised to improve in a critical area of (relative) weakness in 2016: the vote-rich Upstate area around Greenville in the state's northwest, which contributed about one-third of the 2016 primary vote and was Cruz's strongest region. Both The Citadel and Suffolk polls found Trump at around 70 percent support there. His strength in the Upstate region — the most evangelical-rich part of the state — will come in part from having won over very conservative and white evangelical voters more likely to have backed Cruz in 2016.
For her part, Haley will likely do best in Rubio's strongest places, like the more affluent and well-educated Charleston area, where Haley pulled in between 40 and 50 percent of respondents in surveys from The Citadel and Suffolk. Charleston County proper was one of just two counties that Rubio carried in 2016, the other being Richland County (home to Columbia, the state capital) in the center of the state. Haley could be competitive there, too, as the Suffolk poll found her running within a dozen points of Trump in central South Carolina. Overall, the Charleston and Columbia media markets made up about one-sixth and one-fifth of the state's 2016 GOP primary vote, respectively.
—Geoffrey Skelley, 538
In polling conducted since the New Hampshire primary, Trump is viewed favorably by an average of 73 percent of likely South Carolina Republican primary voters, while Haley's average favorability is 51 percent. These numbers are slightly better for the former South Carolina governor than national polling, which, according to 538's tracking, shows 43 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Haley and 81 percent have a favorable opinion of Trump.
—Mary Radcliffe, 538
