South Carolina’s Republican primary for governor is headed to a runoff after Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette failed to secure a majority of the vote Tuesday.
Evette, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump and Gov. Henry McMaster, won about 29% of the vote. She will face Attorney General Alan Wilson, who finished second with about 26%, in a June 23 runoff.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham easily won his Republican primary and avoided a runoff despite facing several challengers.
WFAE's Nick de la Canal spoke with Scott Huffman, director of the Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at Winthrop University, about what the results mean and what to watch next.
Nick de la Canal: Pam Evette had the backing of both President Trump and Gov. Henry McMaster, but she still wasn't able to avoid a runoff. What's your biggest takeaway from that result?
Scott Huffman: Some of the controversy surrounding an alleged backroom deal that may or may not have happened about the endorsement really blunted the impact of Trump's endorsement. One would think it should have rocketed Pam Evette into not needing a runoff.
However, she only beat Attorney General Alan Wilson by a couple of percentage points. So they're going to a runoff. It's almost certain that Donald Trump's endorsement made a difference, but it did not rocket her to the stratosphere as her strategists probably hoped.
De la Canal: And so now the race is down to Evette and Alan Wilson. What do you make of the dynamics of this runoff?
Huffman: We saw a little bit of it in their election night speeches.
Evette is going to go full culture warrior. She is going to hit absolutely everything that the hardcore MAGA, America First Republican cares about.
Alan Wilson struck a more traditional Republican-sounding tone, saying, "I want to push President Trump's agenda," but he wasn't bombastic at all.
One interesting thing is that Nancy Mace, who only got 12% of the vote, came in with the best name recognition early on. But name recognition doesn't translate into votes.
She really can't deliver that many votes to Alan Wilson, and she said they buried the hatchet, but she used that hatchet on him a whole lot early in the race. So you have to wonder: Will he deploy her as a surrogate, or is that not a good strategy?
But we saw some very distinct differences in how it looks like they're going to approach the runoff.
De la Canal: Right. And Nancy Mace, of course, gave her endorsement to Wilson after she was defeated. Now, Lindsey Graham won very comfortably despite some earlier speculation that he might face a runoff. What does that tell us about his standing with Republican voters?
Huffman: He is popular among Republican voters. He always has the lowest approval rating of Republicans among Republicans, but it's always positive.
The argument will be, "Oh, Lindsey Graham should have won with 80% of the vote." It doesn't matter. As long as you get 50% plus one, and he emerged without needing a runoff.
Some critics will say he should have won with 80% of the vote, but that's not how elections work. The goal is to get 50% plus one vote, and he did that without needing a runoff.
De la Canal: Zooming out for a second, I wanted to ask if there were any broader themes that you saw emerging from Tuesday's results.
Huffman: The going back and forth about redistricting is going to be kind of interesting. How will that play out in the general election?
People will look at it and say, "Hey, Republicans didn't help President Trump's agenda," even though the Senate said, "Look, this will hurt South Carolina in the short term."
But look, we have to focus on the runoff. When you only have a hair's breadth of difference between you policy-wise — no matter what they say, Wilson and Evette believe in the same policies — the only way to get around that is to either hype yourself up or tear the other candidate down.
And since this is South Carolina, the latter is what's going to happen.
We're going to see the ad hominem attacks ramp up. It's going to be interesting, to say the least, the strategies they choose. And, as was alluded to, what will Wilson do with Nancy Mace's endorsement? Will Donald Trump jump in with more than a Truth Social endorsement?
Those are the questions we're looking at answering in the next couple of weeks.
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