South Carolina voters will vote on Saturday, deciding between former President Donald Trump or their former governor, Nikki Haley.
Polls close at 7pm ET, after which votes will be tallied and the winner announced. Haley plans to speak once the winner is declared. Trump is organizing a watch party in South Carolina, where he will also likely speak.
South Carolina is holding an open primary, meaning voters of any party can vote in the Republican primary as long as they have not already voted in the Democratic primary, which President Joe Biden won on Feb. 3.
As South Carolinians head to the polls, Trump holds a roughly 30-point lead over Haley, according to a February poll by USA Today and Suffolk University, dashing any hopes of his lead in the field.
Would Haley’s defeat end the primary?
Haley vowed Tuesday to stay in the race until at least Super Tuesday on March 5, regardless of the results in South Carolina. Her campaign has confirmed that she has the funds to keep her afloat after a record month of fundraising in January.
“We have the resources to go the distance,” a spokesperson for Haley’s campaign told CNBC on Tuesday.
Republican candidates need 1,215 delegates to secure the nomination. Trump currently has 63 to Haley’s 17. Until Haley drops out, the Republican primaries will continue to be a two-horse race, much to Trump’s dismay.
But despite her funding and determination, Haley’s campaign faces a steep road ahead.
Haley’s campaign has tempered expectations over the past week, arguing that she doesn’t need to win South Carolina to gain momentum for future primaries. The former United Nations ambassador has yet to win a race this primary season, though she managed a narrower defeat to Trump in New Hampshire due to the state’s large population of undeclared voters.
South Carolina is much less undecided. In addition to holding a lead in the polls, Trump has the support of local chapters of the South Carolina GOP, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace and other state lawmakers. Trump also has a good track record in the Palmetto State, having won the Republican primary in 2016 and taking 55% of the vote in 2020 against Joe Biden.
Where are the candidates on South Carolina’s top issues?
South Carolinians have immigration and the economy top of mind as they vote, mirroring sentiments nationwide. According to the February USA Today/Suffolk University poll, 42% of likely South Carolina Republican voters consider immigration the most important issue, while 26% prioritize the economy.
Trump has made immigration a central pillar of his campaign so far, pledging to reinstate immigration bans and carry out militarized mass deportations that he plans to make far more aggressive than in his first term in the White House.
Despite his hard-line approach to border security, Trump simultaneously worked behind the scenes to derail a bipartisan congressional border deal that would have provided $20 billion in border funding.
Trump reportedly told Republican lawmakers to torpedo the bill so he could continue to criticize Biden and Haley for their positions on immigration on the campaign trail.
Haley criticized Trump for derailing the bill: “Donald Trump, the last thing he needs to do is tell them to wait until the election to pass the border deal.”
Haley herself has a history of being hard-line on immigration, despite the Trump campaign’s attempts to paint her as weak on the issue. She said she would cut funding to sanctuary cities, close the border and deport unauthorized immigrants.
Under the Biden administration, South Carolina’s economy has improved.
Unemployment in the state is at 3%, down from 3.3% a year ago and below the national average of 3.7%. The state was also a major beneficiary of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which invested in electric vehicles and created more than 12,000 jobs so far. Inflation in the state is slowly cooling to 4.3% compared to the national rate of 3.1%.
However, both Trump and Haley have repeatedly criticized Biden’s economy. Their economic agendas both tend to include similar rhetoric aimed at cracking down on trade with China and cutting taxes.
Haley’s economic platform, dubbed the Freedom Plan, focuses on tax breaks for the middle class, strengthening small businesses and eliminating Biden’s $500 billion investment in clean energy projects, which benefited the Carolinas of the South.
Trump would also withdraw Biden’s IRA, restore his first-term tax cuts, which mostly benefited the wealthy, and impose major tax increases on foreign goods, particularly to limit trade with China. During his first term, Trump’s tariffs in China nearly sparked a trade war, disrupting the global economy and driving up prices for consumers.