Donald Trump followed up his win in New Hampshire with victory in South Carolina, and swept all of the state’s 50 delegates. No matter what happens in Nevada – which he looks likely to win anyway – he will go into Super Tuesday with the most delegates for the Republican convention.
Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz finished just 1,091 votes apart in second and third respectively. For Rubio, it’s not quite the 3-2-1 strategy (third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, first in South Carolina) his campaign had been going for; instead he’s only managed a 3-5-2. But he did accomplish two big tasks yesterday: beating Cruz (albeit very narrowly) for the first time, and beating his rivals for establishment support (Bush and Kasich) by a wide margin.
For Cruz, third place in South Carolina is a pretty terrible result. 72 per cent of voters were evangelical Christians – a group with which Cruz expected to do very well – yet he only won 27 per cent of them to Trump’s 33 per cent. It appears that Trump – despite not knowing the names of books of the Bible – has usurped Cruz’s spot as the favourite of the Christian right. It’s very hard to see Cruz’s path to the nomination from here, but he probably has enough money and support to remain a significant factor in the race.
Jeb Bush is done. After more than $100 million spent on his behalf, just 94,411 people voted for him in all of the three states he contested. Despite having had one former President (brother George) and two former First Ladies (mother Barbara and sister-in-law Laura) campaigning for him in South Carolina, Jeb could only manage a distant fourth with 7.8 per cent of the vote. “The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken and I really respect their decision, so tonight I am suspending my campaign,” he announced after the result.
John Kasich will soldier on – he was already in Massachusetts yesterday, campaigning for the primary there on 1 March while voters were still queuing up in South Carolina. He’s also placing a lot of hope in Michigan, which votes a week later, but Rubio is already consolidating support among party elites (in the past week he’s been endorsed by two Governors, a Senator and two Congressmen) and is poised to do much better than Kasich in Nevada and most Super Tuesday states.
So it looks like Rubio by default for the Republican establishment looking to stop Trump and Cruz. He’ll be hoping to gain significant ground in the polls as Bush (and soon Kasich) supporters come around. One thing though: if you’re going to win the primary, at some point you need to start winning primaries.
2,000 miles away, Hillary Clinton scored an important victory in the Democratic caucus in Nevada. Had she lost, there would have been a lot of negative press about her chances and a big boost for Bernie Sanders. Instead, she looks set to follow up a decent five-point win in Nevada with a big win in South Carolina next Saturday (she leads in the polls there by 25 points) and go into Super Tuesday with a strong wind at her back.
So far, Sanders has proved himself to be a more formidable candidate than pretty much anyone expected when he launched his campaign last May, but not a significant threat to Hillary’s nomination. He may have won New Hampshire, but Clinton still has near unanimous support from party elites and a 10-point lead nationally, and she looks set to win most of the Super Tuesday states in addition to Nevada and South Carolina.
Like Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders has beaten expectations so far, is likely to be around for a while longer, but lacks a realistic path to the nomination.
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