GOP, Democrat Campaigns Shift to South Carolina

(Left) Former President Donald Trump at his primary-night party in Nashua, N.H., on Jan. 23, 2024. (Right) Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley at her primary-night rally in Concord, N.H., on Jan. 23, 2024. Chip Somodevilla, Brandon Bell/Getty Images

This text appeared in the ‘Top Story’ email newsletter sent on January 26, 2024.

The battle of the White House heads to South Carolina next week in what could be the last consequential primary in the 2024 election cycle.

Ironically, it’s also the first official primary for Democrats, New Hampshire’s Tuesday contest having been declared “meaningless” by the Democratic National Committee.

Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump seem convinced that their party’s respective primaries in South Carolina will deliver the knockout punch that effectively seals their nominations. Both have begun to conduct their campaigns as if the nominating process is over, focusing on one another as candidates in the general election.

Biden Looks to Make a Statement

Let’s start with Biden, who won the unofficial New Hampshire Democratic primary this week with 64 percent of the vote in a write-in campaign. Challenger Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) gained 20 percent of the vote.

It’s hard to compare apples to apples with previous results because the 2024 presidential race is, well, odd. Democrats reshuffled their election calendar to make South Carolina the first official primary. New Hampshire Dems were not amused. They voted anyway.

So Biden’s result is a historic low for an incumbent Democrat in New Hampshire, but it doesn’t really count. Except in public opinion.

The president is putting up better numbers in South Carolina, leading Phillips by 69 percent to 5 percent in an Emerson College poll released earlier this month.

If the polling in South Carolina proves as accurate as that reported for Iowa and New Hampshire, the Palmetto State could deliver a convincing statement that Biden is the only viable Democratic candidate.

That brings us to Trump and his lone remaining challenger, Nikki Haley.

Haley Carries On

The South Carolina native finished third in Iowa, 32 percentage points behind Trump, as well as losing to Trump by 11 percentage points in New Hampshire and trailing by 38 points in an average of recent South Carolina polls of likely Republican primary voters.

Any number of pundits and not a few Trump supporters have declared the GOP race to be over. That hasn’t stopped Haley from campaigning. She’s stumping in her home state today and tomorrow.

Given that around 70 percent of Haley’s support in New Hampshire came from independent voters in New Hampshire, we’ll be looking to see whether independents sit out the Feb. 3 Democratic primary in South Carolina so they can vote for Haley in the GOP contest on Feb. 24.

South Carolina is an open primary state. That means anybody, including Democrats, can vote in the Republican primary (and vice versa). But they can’t vote in both primaries in the same year.

Trump has collected endorsements from an impressive array of South Carolina politicos, including former GOP candidate Sen. Tim Scott, whom Haley appointed when she was governor. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has also endorsed Trump, as has the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster. 

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) is the lone Congressional representative to have endorsed Haley. 

Haley is still raising cash too. Her campaign reported raising $2.6 million in the 48 hours after the New Hampshire primary. 

It is notable that Ron DeSantis, who suspended his campaign six days ago, had raised some $31 million as of October. Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting the campaign, spent over $100 million.

With the GOP race narrowed to two candidates so early in the year, we’ll be looking at what happens to the sizable number of dollars that flowed to candidates other than Trump will go next—if anywhere. 

Some of it may go to Trump in an attempt to beat Biden, some may go to No Labels, and some may be withheld, according to New Gingrich, commentator for The Epoch Times. 

“Most of those [donors] will, in the end, be faced with a choice between the disaster of the Biden administration and the threat of Kamala Harris as president,” Gingrich said. “My hunch is that most of the money will just stay at home.”

Trump has said he will ostracize big-ticket donors if they continue to support Haley.

“When I ran for office and won, I noticed that the losing candidate’s ‘donors’ would immediately come to me, and want to ’help out.' This is standard in politics, but no longer with me,” the former president wrote on social media on Thursday.

He said that anyone who donated to the Haley campaign would “be permanently barred from the MAGA camp.”