What to watch in South Carolina’s GOP Primary

Voters in South Carolina head to the polls Saturday to cast their ballots in a Republican presidential primary that could well decide the political fate of the state’s former governor, Nikki Haley, in her long-running effort to topple former president’s march To derail Donald J. Trump to the election. Republican nomination.

Here’s what you can see in the Palmetto State as votes are counted Saturday evening.

How soon will the race be called?

As we saw last month in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, the speed of a race call can give the victor — in both cases, Mr. Trump — a sense of momentum, even an air of inevitability. Iowa was called for Mr. Trump before the caucuses even ended.

Polls in South Carolina close at 7 p.m., and Ms. Haley is expected to speak in Charleston once the winner is declared. The Trump campaign will hold a watch party in the state capital of Columbia, where the former president is expected to speak.

An early night for the two remaining candidates will say a lot about where the race goes when they head to Michigan next week ahead of Super Tuesday on March 5, when 15 states will vote to award 874 of the 2,429 Republican delegates.

If the contest culminates in the drumbeat that polls predict it will produce, Ms. Haley, once considered South Carolina’s political star, could be on the verge of defeat. The poll averages are leaving her behind Trump by 30 percentage points.

Just after the New Hampshire primary, Mark Harris, the chief strategist for Ms. Haley’s super PAC, SFA Fund, said the former governor did not need to win her home state, but she did need to exceed her share of the vote in New Hampshire. Hampshire – 43 percent – ​​to show she is making progress with Republican voters.

Betsy Ankney, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, echoed that on Friday, saying, “We never got into those benchmarks. We’re not going to start it now.” But before she pulls off a victory, Ms. Haley must receive some kind of consolation prize from the state where she was born, raised, served as governor and still lives.

Ms. Haley has firmly said she will stay in the race regardless of the outcome in South Carolina. Still, she’s eager to exceed expectations so she can remind voters of her favorite campaign T-shirt: “Underestimate me. That will be fun.”

Poll after poll has shown that most Americans are unhappy about a rematch between President Biden and Mr. Trump, the leading party nominees in 2020. Mr. Biden won the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Feb. 8 with more than 96 percent of the vote. to vote. . But only 131,302 people voted, at the low end of the expected turnout that was always predicted to be anemic.

Unlike Iowa, where freezing temperatures and blowing snow likely hampered attendance, the weather in South Carolina on Saturday will be fine – beautiful, even. Low turnout can be attributed to the state’s lack of drama: Even Ms. Haley’s supporters have little confidence that she could win. But poor turnout among South Carolinians could add a data point to Ms. Haley’s claim that Americans are desperate for a fresh, younger face to vote for in November — or more broadly, the point that neither candidate has voters in has inspired a sullen mood. mood.

How will the Low Country fare?

South Carolina residents like to divide themselves into three sections: the Upstate around Greenville and Spartanburg, where the question is: Which church do you belong to?; the Midlands, dominated by the state capital, where the question is: which agency do you work for?; and the milder Lowcountry of Charleston and the coast, where the question is: what do you drink?

Trump’s strength will lie with evangelical conservatives in the Upstate, and his dominance among elected state officials in Columbia is evidence of Ms. Haley’s weakness in the Midlands, either because of the feathers she ruffled as governor or because the tendency of politicians to take sides. with the favorite.

That leaves the Lowcountry, where affluent Republicans are renovating 19th-century mansions in Charleston and Beaufort, golfing on Hilton Head or building lavish beach houses in Charleston’s Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island suburbs — and where Ms. Haley lives, on Kiawah Island. . The Lowcountry should be Haley country.

But a wave of newcomers — the largest cohort from New York and New Jersey — has led to a proliferation of more middle-class suburbs inland around Charleston, as well as in Horry County, home to Myrtle Beach. They weren’t there for Governor Haley.

The way this region votes will say something about Mr. Trump’s appeal to the well-educated, affluent Republicans who once controlled the party, and to suburbanites unaffected by their past experiences with Ms. Haley.