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Former President Donald Trump has a lead within the Republican presidential primary, however the course of is much from over. The following step is South Carolina’s main, which takes place on Saturday, February 24. Right here’s what to know:
The key candidates embrace Trump, the present front-runner to get the Republican nomination for the third straight presidential election. His prime rival is former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who additionally served as US ambassador to the United Nations for a part of Trump’s time period as president.
South Carolina’s primaries are open, which implies any registered voter can participate in both the Republican main or the Democratic main, however not each. The Democratic main happened earlier in February. President Joe Biden won easily.
Despite the fact that Haley was the state’s governor, Trump has been the clear chief in pre-primary polling. He will get the assist of greater than 60% of GOP main voters in a number of latest polls – far outpacing Haley, who has hovered round 30%.
Trump has held rallies within the state, however a lot of his campaigning has been achieved from courtrooms in New York, Washington, DC, and Florida, the place he faces a series of criminal prosecutions. He was additionally ordered to pay $355 million in a civil fraud case final week.
Quite than harm him, his authorized issues appear to have galvanized Republicans round his marketing campaign. He has additionally used media consideration at courts to dominate marketing campaign protection.
Haley, in the meantime, might undergo an embarrassing loss if she will be able to’t win the state the place she was governor.
It appears probably, though she scored an unbelievable, come-from-behind main win when she first ran for governor in 2010.
She and her allies have far outspent Trump in promoting, spending practically $15 million forward of the South Carolina main in contrast with the $1.3 million spent on his behalf, though pro-Trump adverts have elevated in latest weeks. Whereas spending by Haley’s marketing campaign and its allies is much above Trump’s, it’s lower than half of what was spent in both New Hampshire or Iowa, two states she misplaced.
She has sharpened her criticisms of Trump in latest weeks, significantly specializing in the chaos Trump’s trials will convey, his failure to call out Russia over the death of Vladimir Putin rival Alexey Navalny and his and Biden’s superior ages.
Haley instructed CNN’s Kaitlan Collins final week that each Trump and Biden are “mentally diminished.”
“I’m not going anyplace,” Haley mentioned. “I’m preventing this, as a result of now we have a rustic to avoid wasting. I’m preventing this as a result of I don’t need my youngsters to dwell like this. I don’t need anyone’s youngsters to dwell like this.”
Haley on 2024 election: ‘It’ll both be me or it will likely be Kamala Harris’
Not technically. It’ll finally take 1,215 delegates for Trump, or anybody, to safe the Republican nomination.
Simply 50 delegates are at stake in South Carolina. Heading into the South Carolina main, Trump has the lead with 63 delegates to Haley’s 17. So there’s nonetheless a protracted technique to go.
The biggest pot of delegates is up for grabs on Tremendous Tuesday, March 5. The primary day Trump might attain the magic variety of delegates is March 12. But when the polling bears out and Trump decisively wins Haley’s dwelling state, her declare to being a viable various will get extra questionable with every loss.
It’s additionally doable that Haley is completely shut out of delegates from South Carolina. Twenty-nine of the state’s delegates will go to the statewide winner, and three delegates will go to the winner of every of South Carolina’s seven congressional districts. So if Trump wins statewide and wins every congressional district, Haley might find yourself with no delegates from her dwelling state.
It was an underdog marketing campaign and an inconceivable win for Haley in 2010, when she emerged from a nasty primary during which she was the goal of mudslinging and a whisper marketing campaign. Haley got here from behind on the finish of the race for the shock win, which got here solely after a runoff as a result of no candidate obtained 50% of the vote on main day.
South Carolina has an uncommon follow of letting every occasion choose the date of their presidential main, and so they’re usually held on completely different days.
Democrats needed South Carolina to be the primary massive occasion on their calendar. It’s the state that revived Biden’s marketing campaign after early losses in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020 and is way more numerous than both of these two conventional early states.
Biden received the Democratic main on February 3 with more than 96% of the vote.
Joe Biden celebrates win in South Carolina main
As of the 2020 Census, the state was about 62% White, about one-quarter Black and practically 7% Hispanic. However the Republican main voters are overwhelmingly White. When Trump received the South Carolina main with greater than 32% of the vote in 2016, nearly 1% of the GOP main voters had been Black.
It does. Solely as soon as since 1980 have South Carolina Republican main voters not supported the last word nominee. That was in 2012, when Newt Gingrich, the previous US Home Speaker from Georgia, beat the last word nominee Mitt Romney, who was then a former Massachusetts governor and right now is a senator from Utah.
South Carolina has solely turn out to be a pressure within the Democratic course of extra not too long ago. The one latest election during which South Carolina didn’t choose the last word Democratic nominee was in 2004, when then-Sen. John Edwards, who was born in South Carolina and represented North Carolina within the Senate, beat then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
Given South Carolina’s observe report of rewarding Southern candidates, it’s notable that Trump, a local New Yorker who now calls Florida dwelling, might beat Haley, a former South Carolina governor.
Most likely not. Whereas Biden received close by Georgia by the narrowest of margins in 2020, Trump received South Carolina with more than 55% of the vote that 12 months. The final Democrat to win South Carolina in a presidential election was Jimmy Carter, who’s from Georgia.