Battle in South Carolina
Byron York
BATTLE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. Two things have happened in the last few days in the Republican presidential race in South Carolina. First, former President Donald Trump attended the annual football game between rivals Clemson University and the University of South Carolina on Saturday night at USC’s Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia. Second, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley returned to the state Monday for a rally in Bluffton — her first campaign appearance in South Carolina since Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) dropped out of the race.
You might have heard some reports about Trump being booed at the game. Certainly, there was a smattering of boos — after all, there were 80,000 people at the game, and in a crowd that size, some of them are not going to like Trump. But they appeared to be pretty isolated. Politico reported that Trump “drew overwhelming cheers in South Carolina when he walked onto the field.”
For her part, Haley drew a big crowd of 2,500, with hundreds more outside, at the University of South Carolina’s Bluffton Campus Recreation Center. Getting 2,500-plus people to come out on a Monday afternoon is a big deal, and the Haley campaign sent out an email highlighting various journalists’ comments on the size of the crowd. Bluffton is a well-to-do city in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. It has a median household income of $89,245, compared to the state’s overall median household income of $58,234, according to the Census Bureau. That puts it in the top five of South Carolina’s best-off cities.
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There’s no doubt Haley has some momentum. Her rise began with a good performance in the first, and most attention-getting, Republican debate on Aug. 23. Since then, she has moved steadily upward in the polls. In South Carolina, her home state, she now stands at 18.8% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, well ahead of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), at 10.5%. The problem for both Haley and DeSantis in South Carolina is that Trump stands at 49.3% — 30.5 points ahead of Haley and 38.8 points ahead of DeSantis.
A big variable here is the remnant of Scott’s support. The most recent poll in the RealClearPolitics average, by Winthrop University, was completed the day Scott dropped out. It showed Scott with 10% support in South Carolina. Earlier polls showed him at 6%, 9%, and 10%. So the question is, where does that support go? Does it all, or nearly all, go to Haley? Or does it split among Haley, DeSantis, and Trump? Or does more of it go to Trump?
Who knows? There could be a South Carolina effect with the votes — that is, South Carolinians who supported Scott want to support another South Carolinian. Or maybe not. In Iowa, where Scott was originally well received, Haley seemed to benefit when Scott began to slip in September after a poor performance in the first GOP debate. On the other hand, Haley probably benefited more from DeSantis’s slide in the polls. The same appears to be true in New Hampshire and might prove true in South Carolina.
The point is, it’s impossible to say. First, as has been said many times here, Trump’s lead is unprecedented — no one has ever overtaken an opponent with a margin like that — but his risks are unprecedented, too. There’s no way to say how that will work in the next few months. In addition, South Carolina voters are influenced by what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire. They don’t necessarily follow along — sometimes they want to correct the results from those states — but they are influenced. So there’s no way to know how that will work, either.
But we do know Trump is getting good signs from South Carolina and so, on a smaller scale, is Haley. For now, that’s all you can say.
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