A few weeks after President Joe Biden won South Carolina's Democrat primary, Palmetto State voters cast their 2024 presidential preference votes on Saturday in a contest that seems far from consequential this time around.
South Carolina voters will pick from a list of candidates that includes some no longer running for president such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. But all eyes will be on the candidates still actively on the campaign trail: former President Donald Trump, former Ambassador Nikki Haley, and businessman Ryan Binkley.
The Palmetto State uses an "open primary," meaning members of any party can vote in any primary — but cannot vote in multiple party primaries in one year. That means any South Carolinian voter who didn't cast a ballot in the Democrat primary earlier this month — including Democrats — could vote in Saturday's GOP contest.
Up for grabs: 50 delegates to the Republican National Convention. In South Carolina, delegates are awarded on a winner-take-all basis with 29 allotted to the candidate carrying the state and the remaining 21 allotted to the winner of each congressional district (three delegates for each of S.C.'s seven districts).
Polls in South Carolina close at 7:00 p.m. ET and the first votes are expected to be reported by around 7:30 p.m. Saturday night.
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As always, Townhall has live results below as votes are counted from the Palmetto State via our election results partner Decision Desk HQ.
South Carolina may be former governor-turned-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's home turf, but former President Donald Trump had a healthy lead heading into Saturday's contest. According to the RealClearPolitics average of surveys from February 13-18, Trump is leading Haley by 25.3 points, 61.8 percent to 36.5 percent.
Haley has said she's looking to show momentum in South Carolina, but Trump — coming off wins in the previous contests held in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada with dominating leads — is the one with momentum heading into Saturday's primary.
Still, Haley announced that she's not going anywhere ahead of South Carolina's GOP primary, pledging to keep campaigning until the "last person" has voted in the primaries. The math, however, is just not in her favor for a path to the GOP nomination.
According to the Trump campaign, the former president could have the nomination locked up — by winning a majority of pledged delegates to this summer's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee — by mid-March. According to their number-crunching, even if Haley performs as well as she did in New Hampshire in every state holding primaries over the next month, Trump will still clinch presumptive nominee status before the end of March.
Haley's campaign, in a press call on Friday, pointed to a recent poll showing the former South Carolina governor handily beating Biden in the general and insisted Haley is the only candidate who can beat Biden. Whether that's true or not, Biden's not on Saturday's primary ballot.
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