Topline Takeaways

• Republicans held on to all of their US House seats in South Carolina, in part because Democrats failed to nominate candidates in two districts.

• While Republicans won both the US Senate and gubernatorial races, many voters in majority-Black counties split their tickets and voted for candidates across both parties.

Comparing Senate and Gubernatorial Results

While both Republican incumbents, Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Henry McMaster, won their races Scott saw substantially more support from voters than McMaster. Not only did Scott win by a larger margin than McMasters (25-point margin vs. 19-point margin respectively) he also notched county wins in places that McMaster failed. Specifically Marlboro and Allendale counties, both majority Black counties, opted to support Republican Tim Scott and McMaster’s Democratic challenger Joe Cunningham.

The difference can likely be chalked up to two factors: (1) Tim Scott is more highly regarded by the national Republican party than McMaster and (2) Scott is more appealing to Black conservative voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats. On the first point, Tim Scott has been put on a pedestal by Republicans for being the party’s only Black voice in the Senate. Over the past couple of years he’s become one of the party’s strongest fundraisers and was given a prime-time speaking slot at the 2020 Republican National Convention. He’s also been making appearances in other states throughout this mid-term cycle to support other struggling Republican congressional candidates. Simply put, Scott is seen as a rising star in the party, therefore it’s no surprise that more of the base turned out to support him. In addition to his high-profile status amongst Republicans, his ethnicity endears him to Black voters who have grown tired with the Democratic party.

South Carolina’s US House Races

South Carolina’s US House geography is a hellscape for Democrats. First, Republicans enacted a congressional district map that’s currently being reviewed by SCOTUS for racial gerrymandering. While Republicans have a hefty advantage across most House races before a single vote is cast, Democrats struggle to nominate candidates in every US House district. Both SC-3 and SC-4 saw no Democratic candidates on the ballot. Luckily an independent candidate volunteered to challenge Rep. William Timmons in SC-4, but Rep. Jeff Duncan of SC-3 faced no challengers at all in 2022. Read that again: Rep. Jeff Duncan faced no primary challengers OR general election challengers and was simply gifted another two years in the House by default.

More on South Carolina from Battleground

• Do you know what powers South Carolina’s east-west political divide?

• Learn about inequities in the state’s underfunded rural education system, dubbed by some as the “Corridor of Shame”