Four years ago, the South Carolina primary was critically important for choosing the Democrat presidential nominee. Bernie Sanders had won the first three contests but Joe Biden was the favorite in South Carolina, foreshadowing a long battle between them and possibly others.
But Biden not only won South Carolina, he won it by a huge margin – almost thirty points clear of Sanders, 48.4% to 19.9%. That led the Democrat establishment to rally behind him, and he had a convincing series of wins the following week on Super Tuesday. Sanders withdrew a month latter, allowing the party to unite around Biden and ultimately win the presidency.
This year it’s the Republican Party with a contest for the nomination, and again South Carolina got the expected result but not the expected margin. Coming off a big win in Iowa and a narrower but still very convincing win in New Hampshire, Donald Trump was the unbackable favorite to beat Nikki Haley, despite the fact that it’s the latter’s home state. Polls generally gave him a lead of between 25 and 30 points, and increasing: FiveThirtyEight’s aggregator said 61.6% to 34.0%.
And Trump did win big, but not that big. The margin was almost dead on twenty points, 59.8% to 39.5%. Haley carried three counties, one more than Marco Rubio had managed in 2016, and two of the state’s seven congressional districts. Exit polls showed that she won a majority among those who were registered as independents and those who were not white evangelicals.
So does it matter that Trump fell short of expectations? Probably not, but it keeps the contest alive for a bit longer, and there are enough uncertainties around Trump’s raft of legal problems and his increasingly erratic behavior that it makes sense for Haley to stay in. Michigan, the first of the big states, votes tomorrow night, followed a week later by Super Tuesday.
Most likely that will put the issue beyond doubt; once serious numbers of delegates are at stake, many of them in winner-take-all contests, it won’t take long for Trump to build up an insurmountable lead. But if Republican voters were to experience an unexpected attack of common sense, there is still time.
The World is Not Enough 