How Important Is the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary Race?

When South Carolina chooses its Republican presidential nominee this Saturday, it might be curtains for all the other candidates.

They call it “First in the South” – they are the leaders of the Republican Party in South Carolina. They’re the ones who came up with this slogan when they launched their first presidential primary in 1980, hoping to end decades of Democratic Party rule in the Palmetto State.

It worked. Every four years since the first Republican primary, South Carolinians have voted red instead of blue. Not only that, the person they chose to be their nominee has gone on to represent the GOP in every presidential election except one.

Does the South Carolina Republican primary really matter, though? It seems like Donald Trump is destined to win this Saturday’s vote by a landslide; however, recent history, as well as the latest odds in the political betting sites, have some lessons to teach us about what might happen in 2024.

Is South Carolina A Firewall for Trump?

That’s one of the big f-words coming out of this year’s primary.

Back in 1980, Republicans in South Carolina were very much interested in becoming the pivotal state for determining who would go on to win the U.S. election. They still hold their vote after the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, but they are indeed First in the South.

The 1980 election was especially important to Republicans because Jimmy Carter was in the White House. The “peanut farmer from Georgia” was the first major presidential candidate from the Deep South since Zachary Taylor, who died in office in 1850; Carter took every southern state except Virginia in 1976, winning 56.2% of the vote in South Carolina.

Enter Ronald Reagan.

With states’ rights as his calling card, Reagan shook off poor results in New Hampshire and elsewhere by rallying Southern voters, taking the South Carolina primary with 55% of the vote – and beating Carter 49.6% to 48.0% in the Palmetto State. Ever since, the Democrats haven’t even gotten 45% of South Carolina’s vote.

The Republicans haven’t won every election since then, but the South Carolina primary has indeed produced each of their nominees: Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain and now Donald Trump.

What About Mitt Romney?

Very good, you saw the missing item in the series.

South Carolina voted for Newt Gingrich in the 2012 Republican primary, giving him 40% over Romney’s 28%. This was the only time the firewall didn’t hold up; Romney went on to take the Florida primary by 15 points over Gingrich, after outperforming him in debates – and after Gingrich proposed a permanent U.S. colony on the moon.

Otherwise, the South Carolina firewall has held up.

And it’s almost certainly going to do so again this year, with Trump out-polling Nikki Haley by some 35 points heading into Saturday’s primary. That’s a far wider margin than his 2016 primary win, where Trump (33%) was facing the likes of Marco Rubio (22%), Ted Cruz (22%) and Jeb Bush (8%).

Why South Carolina?

It’s all part of the “Southern Strategy” the Republicans launched in the 1960s to drive voters away from Democrats.

The civil rights movement was on the march, Jim Crow laws were being repealed and those on the Republican right saw fit to court the votes of what Richard Nixon political strategist, Kevin Phillips, called “Negrophobe whites.”

South Carolina has pretty much all the ingredients the Republicans needed to bake this cake.

There’s the relatively high African-American demographic, roughly 30% of residents according to the 1980 survey (that was down to 27.9% in 2010). The remaining 70% are almost entirely of European ancestry; according to the Pew Research Center, 43% of those people identify as Evangelical Protestant.

Then you have the lower education levels in South Carolina, where a 2016 Lindsey Cook report found just 17% of residents holding a bachelor’s degree, compared to 19% across the United States. And there’s the increased military presence in South Carolina, home to The Citadel, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, Fort Jackson and more.

This recipe helped Nixon take South Carolina en route to winning the 1968 presidential election, and when Reagan embraced states’ rights in 1980, it helped the Republicans defeat Carter.

It hasn’t always worked out their way – Gingrich represented Georgia during his time in office – but unless the Democrats come up with another viable candidate from Dixie, the Republicans will continue to make South Carolina the frontline state for their push to the White House.