Trump Sweeps South Carolina
Presidential election in South Carolina, 2016
 Date: November 8, 2016 |
Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates |
Important dates • Nominating process • Ballotpedia's 2016 Battleground Poll • Polls • Debates • Presidential election by state • Ratings and scorecards |
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This article covering the 2016 presidential election was written outside the scope of Ballotpedia's encyclopedic coverage and does not fall under our neutrality policy or style guidelines. It is preserved as it was originally written. For our encyclopedic coverage of the 2016 election, click here.
February 20, 2016
Controversy surrounded the final week of Donald Trump’s campaign in South Carolina, from saying former President George W. Bush (R) should have been impeached for invading Iraq to sparring with the Pope over immigration policy. But that didn’t stop Trump from scoring a convincing victory in the South Carolina Republican primary.
With nearly 100 percent of the precincts reporting, Trump finished 10 percentage points ahead of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who were locked in an extremely close race for second place. The unofficial returns as of late this evening point to a slight Rubio lead over Cruz, placing Rubio in second. Trump also won at least 44 of the state’s 50 Republican National Convention delegates, and could take all of them once votes in the congressional districts are officially tallied.
With over 735,000 votes cast, this was a record turnout for a South Carolina Republican primary.
Trump’s victory was broad-based: he won 44 of 46 counties. The only two counties he lost were Charleston and Richland, both of which Rubio won. In 14 counties, Trump won more than 40 percent of the vote and in Horry, home to Myrtle Beach, Trump’s strongest, he captured 49 percent of the vote.
The range of his victory was also underscored by the television networks’ exit poll, a representative sample of voters who were surveyed as they left their precinct polling stations. Trump won born-again and Evangelical Christian voters who made up nearly three-quarters of the primary voters. He won men and women. He carried self-identified Republicans and independents.
But Trump’s candidacy is sustained by the frustration of Republican voters with Washington and their own party establishment. In the exit poll, South Carolina primary voters were evenly divided on whether they wanted the next president to either “have some experience in politics” or “be from outside the political establishment.” Among those who said they wanted an outsider, Trump won more than 60 percent of the votes. Among those who favored experience, Rubio won a plurality of the vote and Trump won less than five percent. A slight majority of the South Carolina Republican primary voters told the exit poll that they felt “betrayed by politicians in the Republican Party.” Trump won a plurality of those voters as well.
Given the breadth of Trump’s victory in South Carolina, he appears poised to do well in many of the Southern states that hold primaries on March 1. That would be a setback for Cruz’s candidacy. It would also cause a panic in the GOP establishment.
| Color Key |
|---|
| Winning candidate |
| Donald Trump |
| Marco Rubio |
James A. Barnes is a senior writer for Ballotpedia and co-author of the 2016 edition of the Almanac of American Politics. He is a member of the CNN Decision Desk and will be helping to project the Democratic and Republican winners throughout the election cycle.
See also
- Presidential election in South Carolina, 2016
- Presidential Nominating Index: GOP elites tilt to Trump
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
- Presidential election, 2016/Straw polls
