The Republican presidential primary in South Carolina is often considered the most crucial race of the nomination season. When compared to other early voting states, this one has an unparalleled tendency to select the ultimate Republican nominee. Mitt Romney (2012) is the only Republican nominee since 1980 to not win South Carolina but still receive the nomination.
If past trends continue, this year could be the turning point in Nikki Haley’s campaign.
Currently, the Republican presidential nomination is being dominated by Donald Trump. Throughout the state, the former president has maintained a 20-point lead in every poll conducted so far this year. This month, Trump has a 30-point lead in surveys that are eligible for publication by AWN.
To put that in context, in the last 40 years, I have not encountered a single presidential primary when a candidate managed to overcome the deficit that Haley is confronting in her home state.
(The most recent shocking development was the 2016 Michigan primary, where Democrat Bernie Sanders was victorious by a margin of fewer than 20 points, according to AWN-approved polls.)
Haley should be worried about another trend: no major party nominee has ever lost their home state during the primary season since the modern primary system began in 1972. Up until this point, Trump has consistently outperformed his fellow Republicans in the states from which they initially gained office.
As you may remember, Marco Rubio withdrew from the 2016 presidential candidature after losing the Florida primary to Trump. Haley has hinted that she might not follow suit, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Haley may not win South Carolina, but she is certainly doing better than the national average. On a national level, she is trailing Trump by an average of sixty points, according to polls released this week by Quinnipiac University and Marquette University Law School.
There has been a consistent trend in Haley’s polls. During the primary season, candidates often do better in their home states. In both 2016 and 2020, candidates such as Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, Ohio’s John Kasich, and Texas’s Ted Cruz all won their home-state primaries, but none of them came close to becoming their party’s nominee.
With that in mind, Haley’s situation would most certainly worsen following the vote in her own state.
There are still some unanswered uncertainties about the magnitude of Trump’s triumph, even though he is widely expected to win Saturday’s primary.
Although he ultimately won the South Carolina primary in 2016, Trump was defeated in two counties—Charleston, which is home to the coastal city of the same name, and Richland, which is home to Columbia, the state capital. All of the delegates from the state would certainly go to Trump if he were to sweep both counties this time. The Republican Party of South Carolina gives 29 delegates to the state’s overall winner and 3 delegates to the victors in each of the seven congressional districts in the state.
The Republican electorate’s last remaining opposition to Trump would be eroded if he were to win both counties. There are a lot of college graduates in both counties, and they’ve always been the ones to vote against the ex-president in Republican primaries.
Last month, Trump had a terrible showing among Iowa’s college grads and lost New Hampshire’s entirely to Haley. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Haley defeated him in the category of individuals with a master’s degree or higher.
It would be consistent with national polls if Trump were to win over college grads in South Carolina. Trump would receive at least 60% of the vote among college graduates (or White college grads, according to Quinnipiac), according to both Marquette and Quinnipiac. Even as late as the end of last year, polls showed that Trump was well behind that number.
The question that remains is, will Trump suffer any losses in the primaries, assuming the polls are accurate on him?
In 2016, Trump’s performance was lowest in the two states with primaries or caucuses that took place before Super Tuesday: Utah and Washington, DC. At both polls, his percentage was fourteen percent.
If Trump were to win there next month, he would almost ensure something no other Republican candidate in the modern era of presidential primaries has accomplished: winning every race. This would make Trump’s status as the GOP’s beating heart very clear.