By Andy Brack | While most South Carolinians are filling the holiday season with thoughts of sugar plums and Santa Claus, there are more people than you think who have presidential politics on their minds.
South Carolina will host the Democratic Party’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary on Feb. 3, while the state Republican Party’s first-in-the-South primary will be Feb. 24. If you want to vote in the Democratic contest, you need to be registered by Jan. 4. To vote in the Republican primary that pits former President Donald Trump against favorite daughter and former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley, you have to be registered by Jan. 25.
And that’s just where the drama starts that is causing politicos to fret. In South Carolina, you may remember, people don’t register to vote by party, which means they can vote in either of the two primaries – but only one.
So traditional Democratic voters have some calculating to do. The ballot will include three candidates – President Joe Biden, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, and nationally-acclaimed author Marianne Williamson.
Biden is expected to walk away with the primary, but what is causing knots in the stomachs of Democratic leaders and consultants is this question: “By how much will he win?” Why are they asking that? Because he’s got terrible overall poll numbers a year out from the election, despite keeping the economy moving forward at a great pace. (Example: The stock market recently reached a new high.)
Also, South Carolina voters in 2020 rescued the Biden campaign and propelled him with a strong win toward the nomination. Biden got just under 50% of the 539,263 votes cast in a field of seven candidates. Total turnout was 16.4 percent out of 3.3 million voters.
South Carolina was important for the Biden campaign because his performance in 2020 showed his appeal to a diverse electorate, compared with mostly white voters earlier in New Hampshire and Iowa. A large percentage of his supporters in South Carolina were African American.
And that’s what has political types fretting. Biden isn’t doing as well overall in national polls, including with Black voters. And, if they don’t show up like they did in 2020 – even if Biden wins – the punditry will have a field day.
“Biden’s overall approval is low but there is not a strong challenger on the Democratic side,” College of Charleston political scientist Gibbs Knotts noted. “In addition, South Carolina is a very good state for Biden when it comes to the Democratic primary electorate.
So the S.C. Democratic Party (SCDP), officially neutral, is pulling out all the stops to get folks to their polls. It has nearly 50 new staff members and is planning voter outreach in all 46 counties as well as a statewide bus tour.
“We’re going to fight to keep our first in the nation status by making sure our voters know how to seize this opportunity,” SCDP Chair Christale Spain said Dec. 12. “This is the beginning of a new era for the South Carolina Democratic Party – one where we use our resources to meet voters early and often, not just around election time.”
The other thing that bothers some analysts is that a healthy number of Democratic voters might decide not to vote Feb. 3 because they opt to vote Feb. 24 in the GOP contest. Why? To send a message that Trump, who is the frontrunner by a large margin according to a recent Winthrop Poll, should not go back to the White House. They’ll likely back Haley, who is widely seen as the Republican with the best chance to beat Trump.
While the 2020 primary here was a must-win for Biden, the 2024 GOP primary may be a must-win for Haley.
Knotts observed, “The real contest is in the GOP primary, and I could see moderates and independents voting for one of Trump’s GOP challengers.”
More on that soon.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
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