Donald Trump won the SC primary Saturday, a day that saw Jeb Bush – the heir to an American political dynasty – drop out of the race.
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On Saturday, the terminally ill presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, son of one president and the brother of another, died more suddenly than expected.
Instead, Donald Trump defeated Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio for the win.
Just over half of SC primary voters said immigrants who are living in the country illegally should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, and those voters tended to prefer Rubio.
The polls will close in SC around 7 p.m. ET. Rubio being the second, would be on the ballot. So, unless Kasich’s support plummets before then, he could well draw enough support to prevent Rubio from winning some states, or to push him under the threshold necessary to get delegates in other states.
Exit polls indicate a closer race than most pre-primary polls measured. We noted earlier this week that Trump appeared to have locked up the vote of those who would normally vote for the moderate/establishment candidate. “I don’t trust politicians”. “There is nothing easy about running for president”. He also was backed by almost 6 in 10 of the 3 in 10 voters who consider themselves very liberal. Sanders did best with men, voters under 45 and those less affluent and educated.
“The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and SC have spoken, and I really respect their decision”, the former Florida governor told his supporters gathered in Columbia on Saturday night.
The former secretary of state captured the backing of voters who said electability and experience were important in their vote. Trump is likely to win there too.
Trump’s strong showing in SC marked his second straight victory in the Republican primaries and strengthened his unexpected claim on the Republican nomination. Rubio and Bush were both largely considered mainstream conservatives, but Trump argued that he would continue to earn support as candidates leave the race.
From here, Republicans and Democrats swap places, with the GOP candidates preparing to face off Tuesday in Nevada and the Democrats four days later in SC. But that didn’t happen despite spending the most money of any candidate-PAC on the airwaves and bringing in his brother, a former president, and mother, a former first lady, to stump for him.
At his final election-eve rally Friday night in North Charleston, Trump told the widely discredited story of Gen. John Pershing, who was said to have halted Muslim attacks in the Philippines in the early 1900s by shooting the rebels with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood.
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The polling of voters in Nevada and SC was conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks by Edison Research as voters arrived at 25 randomly selected caucus sites.
