Note: Exit poll percentages may be updated as CBS News collects more data.
Voters in South Carolina cast ballots in the 2024 Republican primary on Saturday, just after the polls closed at 7 p.m. election results AYA – CBS News speculates that former President Donald Trump defeated Nikki Haley. Here’s the latest on the factors that went into voters’ decisions — how they chose between former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. at the ballot boxAccording to exit polls.
How did Trump win the South Carolina Republican primary?
Haley didn’t have the home-state advantage.
Trump rated Haley best across most major demographic groups. He won the majority of both men and women and all age groups.
Trump performed particularly well with parts of the Republican base that were prominent among GOP voters, including conservatives and white evangelicals. More than four in 10 South Carolina GOP primary voters described themselves as part of the MAGA movement, and nearly nine in 10 of them supported Trump.
South Carolina Republican Primary Exit Poll Results for 2024
A majority of South Carolina GOP primary voters reject the charge that Trump is mentally unfit to serve as president, according to early exit polls.
And according to early exit polls, South Carolina’s Republican primary voters are also dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country and are giving negative ratings to the country’s economy. In fact, nearly nine in 10 of these voters say they are dissatisfied with how things are going in the country — with nearly half saying they are angry about it. This currently exceeds the 36% of New Hampshire primary voters who said they were angry. Eight out of 10 say the economy is either not very good or bad.
Physical and mental fitness for office
Haley has questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office, but Trump’s voters overwhelmingly refuted this, and most instead charged that it is Haley who has what it takes to serve effectively as president. There is lack of physical and mental health. As a result, Trump outperformed Haley on this measure among Republican primary voters overall in South Carolina.
What do South Carolina GOP primary voters look like? It is more conservative.
These early exit polls show voters largely conservative, and this more resembles the Iowa GOP caucuses than the New Hampshire Republican primary.
This electorate is more conservative than in 2016, when Trump won the Republican primary in this state.
conservative: More than four in 10 GOP primary voters call themselves “very conservative”, up from 38% who identified themselves that way in the 2016 primary. In 2016, people who were “somewhat conservative” outnumbered those who were “very conservative”. But today the situation is opposite in primary.
asked for: Nearly half of South Carolina GOP voters identify as “MAGA,” in line with Iowa GOP caucusgoers (46%), but higher than what CBS News saw in the New Hampshire primary.
evangelical: Nearly six in 10 voters are white evangelicals, nearly three times their number in the New Hampshire Republican primary. And if that holds, it will exceed 55% of those identifying as white evangelicals in the Iowa caucuses.
independent: Only about a quarter of voters call themselves independent, which is less than New Hampshire’s 44%. About 4% of primary voters today identify as Democrats.
Race: As we often see with Republican primary voters, this electorate is overwhelmingly white. More than nine in 10 voters are white.
When do polls close in South Carolina?
Voting will close at 7 pm
When will we know complete South Carolina GOP primary results?
Primary results in the South Carolina Republican primary will begin coming in after polls close. CBS News will not describe or project the outcome of the race until the final polls close at 7 p.m. ET.
Current Republican delegate counts for 2024 candidates
This is CBS News’ latest estimate of how many delegates have been allocated to Republican candidates, based on the results of the nominating contests so far. Heading into the South Carolina primary, Trump had a projected 63 delegates compared to Haley’s 17 delegates. South Carolina allocated 50 delegates. There are twenty-nine state representatives and the winner will win them all. Twenty-one are allocated by congressional district – three for each of the seven districts, and the winner takes all the delegates from each district.
There are 50 delegates at stake and 29 will be awarded to the winner of the statewide vote. Twenty-one delegates will be allocated according to votes in each of the state’s seven congressional districts. The top vote getter in each district will get three representatives from that district. The tracker currently includes projected delegates allocated after GOP contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
