Trump wins South Carolina GOP primary as Haley vows to stay in race

CNN projects that Donald Trump will win South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District and the district’s three delegates. With all the state’s delegates allocated, here’s CNN’s final South Carolina Republican delegate estimate: 

Total delegates won to date: 

1,215 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination. 

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has been a strong advocate for Nikki Haley, makes the case for her staying in the race after she lost her home state of South Carolina in the Republican primary.

Watch here:

Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin discusses Nikki Haley’s determination to continue her presidential campaign despite Donald Trump capturing the Republican primary in Haley’s home state.

Watch below:

If Nikki Haley isn’t likely – at least not at the moment – to win any primaries or caucuses, is there an argument she could amass enough to keep Donald Trump from securing it?

That seems extremely unlikely.

Trump’s campaign believes the former president will have enough delegates to secure the GOP nomination – the magic number is 1,215 of 2,429 delegates – before the end of March. Heading into South Carolina, Trump had 63 delegates and Haley had 17.

Haley has mentioned Super Tuesday, March 5, as a key date. In 15 contests, more than 850 delegates, 35% of the Republican total, will be up for grabs on that date. But it still isn’t halfway through the primaries.

It’s also before any of Trump’s four criminal trials get under way, although news coverage of those trials do not seem likely to hurt him in Republican primaries.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley lost in Iowa and New Hampshire. She placed second to “none of these candidates” in a Nevada primary for which there were no delegates at stake and where Donald Trump was not on the ballot. Now she has lost the primary in her home state of South Carolina, where she was a two-term governor.

Her insistence on staying in the race puts her in a rarefied position: the losing candidate who won’t quit.

No other major, modern candidate has refused to drop out of the race after so many losses.

Most candidates reading the writing on the wall drop out after Iowa or New Hampshire, or at least early enough to avoid the embarrassment of a home-state loss. That’s what Sen. Amy Klobuchar did in 2020, suspending her campaign days before Warren and before she was set to lose the primary in her home state of Minnesota.

Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison said Saturday that the results of the South Carolina GOP primary “all but confirm that MAGA extremism has taken over the Republican Party — and that Donald Trump will once again be the Republican nominee for president.”

“The American people rejected MAGA extremism in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, and will reject it again at the ballot box this November,” Harrison said in a statement.

Donald Trump has won the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, defeating Nikki Haley on her home turf as he completed his sweep of the early voting states.

The race accelerates now: The slow march through the early voting states is over, and the primary is now a national one. By March 12, 56% of the delegates to the Republican National Convention will have been awarded. And in most states, Republicans’ delegates are winner-take-all — which means Haley gets no credit for strong second-place showings. With Haley winless so far, the finish line — 1,215 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination — could be in sight for Trump within weeks.

Trump dominates the GOP establishment — again: In case it wasn’t clear when he won the nomination in 2016, became president, ran all but a select few Republican critics out of office or the party, then stormed into the 2024 race despite facing multiple indictments: The GOP belongs to Donald Trump. Trump’s success in Haley’s home state underscores how much has changed in less than a decade. Nor has it been a hostile takeover, no matter how hostile Trump can be toward his rivals: Most Republican voters are all in on Trump, and the parts of his personality that make establishment Republicans cringe are — as we’ve seen — actually a large part of his appeal to a majority of voters.

Where does Haley go from here? There was once a narrow, but tantalizing, path for Haley to seriously challenge Trump for the Republican nomination. It started with winning in New Hampshire and her home state. But that potentially game-changing stretch of the Republican primary race is over. Following Saturday’s projected loss, Haley’s campaign announced a swing through Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah starting Sunday, and she’s also spending money on advertising targeting Super Tuesday states. Whether she’ll actually notch any wins and begin to seriously challenge Trump in the delegate race, though, is a tougher question.

A big enough pro-Haley coalition doesn’t exist in GOP primaries: Haley’s campaign has long touted general election polls that show her in a much stronger position than Trump in a hypothetical matchup against Biden. But she can’t skip the step of defeating Trump in a primary first. There’s long been a theoretical coalition for Haley that includes moderate Republicans, independents allowed to vote in Republican primaries in some states and those turned off by Trump — particularly suburban, college-educated voters who have fled the party since Trump’s ascension in 2016. But that coalition isn’t showing up for Haley in the primary — at least not in enough force.

Tim Scott’s veepstakes audition: The most important result of South Carolina’s primary might be the cozy relationship Trump seemed to develop with his onetime 2024 GOP primary rival, Sen. Tim Scott. The last few weeks may have served as Scott’s audition for the vice presidential nomination. He campaigned with Trump, appeared alongside him in a Fox News town hall and other interviews, and urged Haley — who appointed him to his Senate seat when she was governor — to get out of the race.

CNN can project that Nikki Haley will win South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, and the district’s three delegates.  

Donald Trump has so far won 44 delegates in the Palmetto State. The last three delegates will be awarded to the winner of the 6th Congressional District. 

Here are the total delegates both candidates have won to date:

Remember: 1,215 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination. 

Nikki Haley aggressively went after former President Donald Trump over the last few weeks after he said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defense.

Haley accused Trump of siding with a “dictator who kills his political opponents,” at many events, and sometimes went even further.

“Trump is siding with a tyrant who arrests political journalists and holds them hostage. Trump is siding with Putin, who’s made no bones about wanting to destroy America,” Haley told supporters in South Carolina two days before the primary. 

Her message hit home for many of her supporters who spoke with CNN at her events, and indeed, CNN exit polls showed that for 73% of Haley voters, foreign policy was the most important issue.

But only 13% of voters overall in the exit polls named it their top issue. Foreign policy ranked far behind immigration and the economy for the majority of voters, which means Haley’s message didn’t resonate with a wide swath of South Carolinians.

Former President Donald Trump will win South Carolina’s 2nd and 4th Congressional districts, CNN projects, picking up six more delegates. 

Trump has so far won 44 delegates in the Palmetto State. The remaining six delegates will be awarded based on the results in the 1st and 6th Congressional districts, with three delegates awarded to the winner of each.

Here are the total delegates won to date:

Remember: 1,215 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination. 

A group of Detroit, Michigan, voters were split when it came to how they felt about the ages of presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The group included veterans or family to veterans. They provided CNN with their first names.

A Democratic voter named Bill told CNN’s Gary Tuchman that he does believe Biden “is a little too old” to serve as president, but pointed out the age gap between the two candidates is only four years. He said Trump and Biden are “about the same age.”

Michigan is set to hold the next primary of the 2024 cycle on Tuesday.

Republican voter Rich told Tuchman that Trump’s age is “just a number.” He said he thinks it’s time for Nikki Haley to drop out of the race.

Colleen, another Republican, agreed that Trump’s age won’t affect her vote for him, saying that not even Trump’s legal woes would sway her support. She added that she does not believe Haley “has enough momentum to unify the Republican party.”

But Jeff, an Independent, is leaning toward Haley, even after her projected loss Saturday in the South Carolina primary. He said he was impressed by Haley’s speech tonight following her loss

“She actually gave me a spark of hope that there is some new blood that could do the country well,” he said.

Voters Kort and Del said the ages of Biden and Trump have also influenced their positions ahead of the primary in their state.

President Joe Biden said Donald Trump “wants to take us backwards” following the former president’s projected win in the South Carolina GOP primary.

“Every day, we are reminded of the threat Donald Trump poses to our future as Americans grapple with the damage he left behind,” Biden said in a statement released by his 2024 presidential campaign Saturday night. “In 2020, I ran for president because the very soul of America was at risk.”

Biden said Trump’s recent comments that his mug shot and indictments appeal to Black voters tap into “a hatred and divisiveness that is the very worst of us.”

“We all have more to do to push towards a more perfect union, but Trump wants to take us backwards,” the president said.

Biden also cited abortion access, the economy, and the January 6, 2021, insurrection in his statement, concluding by saying Americans of all political parties should “keep moving forward.”

An adviser to former President Donald Trump says to expect Trump and his campaign team to begin a more extensive pivot to the general election after tonight — including conversations about how to build out their teams in critical swing states like Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.  

While Trump remains privately irked that Haley is remaining in the race, his allies are urging him to aim his ire at President Joe Biden, and to act like the presumptive nominee. 

One senior adviser said that’s easier said than done, acknowledging they’ve told him to “ignore her” a number of times.

What I’m hearing from most of my sources is speculation about Nikki Haley’s future — and what damage she might do to herself if she continues in the race. Her campaign just formally announced she’s staying, in an email with the subject line, “The fight goes on.”

Here’s a roundup of some of the chatter surrounding Haley’s projected loss in her home state:

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will dive into a busy 10 days beginning Sunday: She is heading to Michigan and then onto at least eight Super Tuesday states as she keeps her campaign alive, despite a loss in her home state.

Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankney told CNN that Haley will travel to Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont over the course of the next 10 days.

Haley’s schedule shows where the campaign sees fertile ground, mostly states in the northeast and in the western part of the country.

Massachusetts and Vermont have a winner-take-all rule if one candidate clinches more than 50% of the vote, and the campaign thinks that hitting that goal could be possible for Haley, one campaign official said.

Campaign reaching out to donors: Haley has 10 fundraisers planned — with one in every state that she is visiting — according to a campaign email sent to donors and reviewed by CNN, which promises the sprint to be “a wild ride.”

Some Haley donors told CNN that they still plan to throw their support behind her, despite her South Carolina loss. But one donor said that if she does not perform well on Super Tuesday, it “will put a significant dent in her armor.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s pitch to her home state’s primary voters – including arguments about her relative fitness for the presidency and her electability in November – largely failed to win over the conservative, MAGA-friendly electorate, according to the results of CNN’s exit poll for South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary Saturday. CNN has projected that former President Donald Trump will win the primary, continuing his sweep this year.

More than three-quarters of voters said they made their minds up before this year even began, with an overwhelming majority of those early deciders backing Trump. By contrast, the small fraction who were still undecided in January or even more recently broke, by a somewhat narrower margin, for Haley.

The electorate for the South Carolina Republican primary looked much more like the one for January’s Iowa caucuses than for the New Hampshire primary. As in Iowa, over four in 10 South Carolina primary voters described themselves as affiliated with the MAGA movement.

Only about one-third acknowledged that Joe Biden was the legitimate victor of the 2020 presidential election – similar to Iowa, but lower than in New Hampshire, where nearly half of primary voters acknowledged Biden’s victory. And only about one-third of South Carolina primary voters said they’d consider Trump unfit for the presidency if he were convicted of a crime.

Read more about the primary’s exit polling.

South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, a key advocate of President Joe Biden, told CNN on Saturday that former Gov. Nikki Haley’s projected loss in her home state was “not surprising” but that she should stay in the race.

“This is not surprising, and I think all of us expected that. All the polls predicted this kind of an outcome,” Clyburn told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “But I just want to say, I believe that Nikki Haley should stay in the race.”

Clyburn said that Haley is “prepared to offer herself as an off-ramp” to Republicans “that they may need between now and the convention.”

The Palmetto State congressman said he does not see a path of nomination for Haley beyond an extraordinary circumstance. But he stressed that there “could be” one, referencing Trump’s legal troubles, and thus, said Haley should “stay in to maintain a position in case it gets to that.”

“Because remember, if Trump runs into problems, the MAGA Republicans are going to cry foul no matter what happens and they will be a problem for her,” Clyburn said. “So she should keep herself available for those Republicans who do believe in a forward thrust for this great country of ours.”

Clyburn also said he will not comment on Trump’s remarks that his mug shot and indictments appeal to Black voters, but called Trump a “disgrace” and described the remarks as “not unusual” behavior for the former president.

President Joe Biden’s campaign is fundraising off of former President Donald Trump’s projected win in the South Carolina Republican primary, saying Trump is “clearly positioned” to become his party’s nominee in an email to potential donors.

“I hope you’ll give me a chance to explain what that means for the stakes of this race and, if you’re able, consider making a contribution to my campaign,” the fundraising email continues. 

The Biden campaign hasn’t formally weighed in on the results yet.

Amid speculation about former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s path forward, the lead super PAC supporting her campaign reported a $500,000 independent expenditure in Michigan — the next state to host a nominating contest.

According to a new FEC filing from Saturday evening, SFA Fund will spend half a million dollars on digital ads in the Wolverine State. It’s the largest ad buy from a Republican in Michigan to date, and a possible statement of intent from Haley’s network that they intend to press on in the White House race after her projected loss in South Carolina.

The Michigan contest, set for February 27, has seen almost no ad spending, after Republican campaigns and outside groups combined to spend tens of millions of dollars on contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and — to a lesser extent — South Carolina. 

To date, Haley’s campaign has spent about $437,000 on advertising in Michigan, the only other advertiser to spend more than $100,000. SFA Fund’s latest independent expenditure marks its first activity in the state.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said she will continue running for president, even after her projected loss in the GOP primary in her home state.

“I’m a woman of my word,” she said in Charleston, South Carolina, referring to her earlier pledge to stay in the race until Super Tuesday. “I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”

Haley’s remarks were presented in a more somber tone, compared to her speech following the New Hampshire primary.

She said she does not believe Trump can beat Biden in a rematch presidential election, saying that “Trump drives people away.”

Haley also acknowledged she lost by a wide margin, but highlighted “40% is not some tiny group.” She made the case that while she has lost four states to the former president, there are many more that still haven’t voted.

“In the next 10 days, another 21 states and territories will speak. They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate,” she said. “And I have a duty to give them that choice.”

She also went on to reiterate she isn’t running for the vice presidency.

CNN’s Ebony Davis contributed reporting.

This post has been updated with more of Haley’s comments.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley congratulated former President Donald Trump on his projected victory in the Palmetto State’s GOP primary, and she thanked the state’s voters “for using the power of your voice.”

“No matter the results, I love the people of our state,” Haley said. “I love what we accomplished together and I love how we’ve united during our worst challenges and tragedies.”

Haley shared that she voted Saturday with her mother, who she said was a lawyer in India. Haley described the experience as “something very special.”

“She was named one of the first female judges, and because of the times, she was never able to sit on the bench,” Haley said. “But the fact that she could go with me and cast her ballot for her daughter as president of the United States was an amazing moment.”  

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is speaking now from Charleston after CNN projected she will lose the GOP primary in her home state.

Nikki Haley is in a war room monitoring the votes with her closest aides, two sources tell CNN. She’s in a very serious mood, one of them said. 

That room is in the same hotel that CNN is in now for her campaign headquarters party. 

Haley’s team is waiting for a larger portion of the vote rally to be in before she speaks, the sources said. They noted that the final vote count is not in from bigger areas in the state, such as Greenville. 

The sources also said that they don’t sense that Haley is considering a drop out speech. They just want more information for when she speaks. 

Former President Donald Trump did not mention his GOP rival Nikki Haley in his victory remarks after being projected the winner of the South Carolina primary.  

Trump thanked his family, including his son Eric Trump and Eric’s wife Lara Trump, whom Trump has backed to be the next co-chair of the Republican National Committee. They both stood on stage with Trump.

He also thanked several members of his family who did not attend the party, including former first lady Melania Trump, and his children Barron, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany, calling them “so, so supportive.”

Trump also praised North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley, whom he’s endorsed to be the next chair of the RNC and who was also in attendance at Trump’s watch party.

He gave several members of Congress shoutouts in his speech, including South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, and he appeared to jokingly described her as a “non-controversial person.” He used the same description for Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Former President Donald Trump will win South Carolina’s 3rd, 5th and 7th Congressional Districts, CNN projects, picking up nine more delegates.

Trump has so far won 38 delegates in the Palmetto State and the remaining 12 will be awarded based on congressional district results, with 3 delegates awarded to the winner in each of the state’s four remaining districts. 

Here are the total delegates won to date:

Remember: 1,215 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination. 

There was a muted response in the room of Nikki Haley’s campaign party when CNN projected that Donald Trump would win the South Carolina primary — until the former president started speaking.

A man started waving a South Carolina loves Nikki Haley sign in front of the projection of Trump speaking, and moments later chants for Haley broke out.

“I don’t think it is over,” Nell Parker, a Haley supporter in the room told CNN. Parker said she plans to rally North Carolina for Haley, and feels good about her odds going forward. 
“We are for anyone against Trump,” said another Haley supporter in the room. 

Others said they did not trust the projection, and were frustrated about polls generally.

No one in the room said they believe this is the beginning of the end for Haley.

The Haley campaign say they feel that they did everything they could to effectively compete in South Carolina, but aides said frustrations arose throughout the last month given the strong hold that Trump has on the state. For example, the Republican group at Clemson University endorsed Trump, which was frustrating for Haley’s team given the school is her alma mater.  

Nikki Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankney said Saturday that the campaign plans to pour a hefty amount of resources into Super Tuesday states.

Asked by CNN’s Kylie Atwood which of the states she believes Haley can win over former President Donald Trump, Ankney did not specify.

Super Tuesday, which falls on March 5 this year, refers to the date where the greatest number of US states holds primary elections and caucuses.

“Haley has been the underdog in this race the entire time,” she said. “We know that Trump is a juggernaut. We know that he is strong. We know that he has been the de facto leader of the party for the past eight years. So, breaking that hold is going to take a lot.”

Ankney highlighted the significant number of resources the campaign plans to spend ahead of the March 5 elections, adding there’s “a lot at stake.” It includes a seven-figure ad buy in the Super Tuesday states, with national cable and digital spots.

“We are going to be in Michigan tomorrow. We announced a half-million dollar buy there. Then we’re heading to Minneapolis. We’re going to be in Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont,” she said.

Remember: Super Tuesday, which falls on March 5 this year, refers to the date where the greatest number of US states hold their primary elections and caucuses. Haley has vowed to stay in the race at least through this key date in the presidential election calendar.

Ankney’s comments came shortly before CNN projected Trump’s win over Haley in the GOP primary in her home state of South Carolina.

South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham was heavily booed at former President Donald Trump’s election night watch party in Columbia, South Carolina. 

Trump introduced Graham, who is part of his South Carolina leadership team, and asked the senator to say a few words.

“Another man, not a lot of people know him, he doesn’t do too much television, he happens to be a little further left than some of the people on this stage, but I always say when I’m in trouble on the left, I call up Lindsey Graham,” Trump said.

The crowd then began to boo Graham.

“I love him, he’s a good man,” Trump said.

As former President Donald Trump looks for more avenues to raise money for his potential rematch with President Joe Biden — as well as his mounting legal fees — allies have announced the creation of a new super PAC. Right for America is being led by Trump ally Sergio Gor, who will serve as CEO. 

Billionaire Ike Perlmutter, the former CEO of Marvel Entertainment and close friend of Trump’s, is supporting the super PAC, which already has donors across the country, a source familiar told CNN.

MAGA Inc, the other Trump-aligned super PAC, will continue to operate and fundraise. It was not immediately clear how the two would differentiate.

Former President Donald Trump celebrated being the projected winner of the South Carolina GOP primary in a speech Saturday night.

“There’s never been a spirit like this,” Trump said as he addressed a cheering crowd at his election night watch party in Columbia.

He went on to say that he has “never seen the Republican party so unified as it is right now.”

“This was a little sooner than we anticipated, and an even bigger win than we anticipated,” he said.

Trump was flanked on stage by Republican leaders in South Carolina, including Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Tim Scott, who both said a few words.

Former President Donald Trump is now speaking after becoming the projected winner in South Carolina, defeating former Gov. Nikki Haley in her home state.

With CNN’s projection that Donald Trump will win the South Carolina Republican primary, he will also win all 29 of the state’s at-large delegates, as of 7 p.m. ET. 

The remaining 21 delegates will be awarded based on the congressional district results, with three delegates awarded to the winner in each of the state’s seven districts.

So far in the primary contests, Nikki Haley has won 17 delegates and Trump has won 92.

Remember: 1,215 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination. 

Former President Donald Trump will win South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, CNN projects, further tightening his grip on the nomination and leaving his last remaining major rival Nikki Haley to consider her dwindling options.

The former president has swept all GOP nominating contests to date, first beating the field by large margins in Iowa and New Hampshire, before cleaning up in Nevada, where Haley didn’t appear on the ballot, and in the US Virgin Islands.

Trump’s victory now places the onus on Haley, the former South Carolina governor who doubled down earlier this week in a speech, declaring, “I’m not going anywhere.”

The next stop on the GOP nominating calendar is Michigan, where Republicans will vote in a primary Tuesday. After a few m ore scattered contests, March 5 will bring Super Tuesday – and an opportunity for Trump to draw even closer to wrapping up his third consecutive party nomination.

Defeated on her home turf, Haley’s already struggling campaign is likely to come under renewed pressure from Republicans who want her to drop out and allow Trump to focus exclusively on his likely rematch with President Joe Biden, who won the Palmetto State’s Democratic primary earlier this month with more than 96% of the vote.

This post has been updated with additional reporting on Trump’s South Carolina win.

It’s 7 p.m. ET and polls are closing across South Carolina. Here are key things to know about state’s primary:

The candidates: The major candidates include former President Donald Trump, the current front-runner to get the Republican nomination for the third straight presidential election. His top rival is former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also served as US ambassador to the United Nations for part of Trump’s term as president.

Who can vote? South Carolina’s primaries are open, which means any registered voter can take part in either the Republican primary or the Democratic primary, but not both. The Democratic primary took place earlier in February. President Joe Biden won easily.

Who has been ahead in the GOP primary? Even though Haley was the state’s governor, Trump has been the clear leader in pre-primary polling. He gets the support of more than 60% of GOP primary voters in several recent polls – far outpacing Haley, who has hovered around 30%. Trump has held rallies in the state, but much of his campaigning has been done from courtrooms in New York, Washington, DC, and Florida, where he faces a series of criminal prosecutions. He was also ordered to pay $355 million in a civil fraud case last week.

If Trump wins South Carolina, is the primary over? Not technically. It will ultimately take 1,215 delegates for Trump, or anyone, to secure the Republican nomination. Just 50 delegates are at stake in South Carolina. Heading into the South Carolina primary, Trump has the lead with 63 delegates to Haley’s 17. So there is still a long way to go. The largest pot of delegates is up for grabs on Super Tuesday, March 5.

What are the state’s demographics? As of the 2020 Census, the state was about 62% White, about one-quarter Black and nearly 7% Hispanic. But the Republican primary voters are overwhelmingly White. When Trump won the South Carolina primary with more than 32% of the vote in 2016, just about 1% of the GOP primary voters were Black.

Here’s what else to know about the South Carolina GOP Primary

More than seven in 10 voters in South Carolina’s Republican primary said they’d be satisfied to see former President Donald Trump win the presidential nomination, according to early results of CNN’s exit poll in the state.

Only about four in 10 said that they’d be satisfied if Nikki Haley – the state’s former governor – won the nomination. The electorate turning out for South Carolina’s primary was overwhelmingly Republican, with close to seven in 10 identifying as Republicans. Roughly six in 10 primary voters in the state are White evangelical or born-against Christians.

South Carolina GOP primary voters take a largely negative view of the state of the nation, with nearly nine in 10 saying they’re unhappy with the way things are going in the country, and nearly half who say they’re angry about the state of things. About four in 10 call immigration their top voting issue, with about three in 10 picking the economy and fewer citing foreign policy or abortion.

Only about one in six say the nation’s economy is in good condition. But closer to home, more than eight in 10 describe their own financial situation in neutral or positive terms, with most – about 60% – saying their own finances are holding steady.

More about the exit polls: They are estimates, not precise measurements of the electorate. That’s particularly true for the preliminary set of exit poll numbers, which haven’t yet been weighted to match the final results of the primary. But the results provide a glimpse of the type of voters turning out to participate. The exit poll for South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary was conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. It includes 1,508 interviews with Republican primary voters across 38 different polling places on Election Day. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.

Read more about the exit poll’s findings.

South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted a big win for former President Donald Trump in the state’s Republican primary and suggested that, if that’s the case, “there’s really no pathway” for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

When asked by CNN’s Dana Bash whether he would call on Haley to drop out, Graham said, “Well, she’s a friend and I want her to be part of the future of the Republican party,” but added: “The sooner we come together, the better.”

“She has lots be proud of, but we need to come together as quick as we can,” Graham told CNN. “I’m hoping (Trump) will give a gracious speech tonight, and we get the party unified and focus on November. The sooner, the better.”

Graham predicted that Trump will win by over 20%, citing the support of evangelical Christians.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tied at the top of the Conservative Political Action Conference’s vice presidential straw poll, receiving 15% support from over 1,400 attendees at the conference.

Here’s how others fared:

The straw poll, which covers conference attendees, is not a scientific survey and does not represent the larger GOP electorate.

The poll asked CPAC attendees if they would want to see former President Donald Trump or former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley win the Republican nomination. Trump won 94% among CPAC attendees, while Haley won 5%. 

Who lives in South Carolina, the state casting votes in tonight’s primary election? Here’s the breakdown on education rates, the rural population and income levels across the Palmetto State:

Former President Donald Trump narrowly won Greenville County, South Carolina, in the 2016 primary, and then dominated there in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. 

Nikki Haley supporters are not letting that history phase them. 

Misty Shaw, a resident of the Mauldin, South Carolina area, told CNN this primary is “an opportunity to shift the course of history. It feels like a rare chance to do that.”

“When I think about this country and the leader of this country — my parents are immigrants and so much of my family’s sprinkled across the Earth, I want to be able to look at our leader and be proud of who our leader is, and not be ashamed at least,” Shaw said. 

A separate Haley voter said Trump has already hurt the country too much.

“I wasn’t very happy with the Trump presidency. We’ve been politically degraded in how he acts,” Elijah Caldwell told CNN. 

Not all of her primary support, however, has come from Republicans. One Democrat said she withheld her vote in the state’s Democratic primary on February 3 to vote against Donald Trump in this one. 

Kathy Linberg’s motivation was simply “to keep Trump off the ballot.”

“He’s been criminally indicted,” she told CNN. “I do not like the idea of Trump in office again.”

South Carolina has open primaries, so anyone can vote for anyone — but they can’t vote twice. 

More than 2,000 voters have cast their ballots at the Jennie Moore Elementary School polling location in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, according to clerk Theresa Reed.

Reed told CNN that she expected turnout at the location — where six precincts are voting — to be good, but this has exceeded her expectations. She also said she’s gotten a lot of positive feedback from the County Board of Elections for how they’ve handled the volume. 

When a teenage voter cast his ballot for the first time, an election official inside yelled out, “Hey everyone, we have a first-time voter!” and people applauded, which Reed said is a tradition.

CNN saw a lot of Nikki Haley support at this location, in spite of her long odds. Dozens of voters cited her term as governor and former President Donald Trump’s divisiveness as reasons for supporting her.

Former President Donald Trump spent very little time, money or effort campaigning in South Carolina but is still poised to steamroll the state’s former governor and his last remaining GOP rival, Nikki Haley.

Recent polls show Trump leading Haley by roughly 30 points. Despite this, a large part of Trump’s campaign against Haley has been focused on attempting to embarrass her in her home state through a series of endorsements by high profile South Carolina elected officials, many of whom had worked with Haley in the past. 

Trump and his team are hoping that another definitive win tonight will help bring in holdout donors as well as Republicans who were on the fence.

Trump has privately complained about Haley staying in the race. And while the former South Carolina governor has said she plans to stay in the race until every primary vote is cast, there is still a hope among Trump’s allies that a blowout loss by Haley could add pressure for her to exit sooner. 

While it is still early in the primary season, Trump and his team are eager to pivot to the general election after tonight and turn their full focus on President Joe Biden, as well as take advantage of the support that being the presumptive nominee would bring. 

Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in October, told CNN’s Erin Burnett Saturday that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley should stay in the race, no matter the outcome on Saturday.

“The reality is if she has a momentum to keep going, has the money to keep going, you should,” said Hurd, who endorsed Haley when he exited the race. “This isn’t over until somebody gets 1,215 delegates.”

Haley has vowed to stay in the race through Super Tuesday on March 5, but she has not won any 2024 primary contests so far. Haley has won 17 delegates so far and 1,215 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination. Polls show that former President Donald Trump holds a considerable lead over her in her home state.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Haley has not won any delegates. She has won 17 delegates to date.

The electorate that Donald Trump and Nikki Haley are battling to win in South Carolina looks much more like Iowa than New Hampshire, according to the initial results of CNN’s exit poll for South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary.

As in the Iowa caucuses, well over four in 10 of South Carolina primary voters describe themselves as affiliated with the MAGA movement, the exit poll finds. Roughly eight in 10 say they’re conservatives, with more than four in 10 calling themselves very conservative. And only about one-third acknowledge that Joe Biden was the legitimate victor of the 2020 presidential election — similar to Iowa, but lower than in New Hampshire, where nearly half of primary voters acknowledged Biden’s victory.

The exit poll also shows most South Carolina GOP primary voters made up their minds before 2024 even started. More than three-quarters say they decided whom they would support for president sometime prior to January, and fewer than one-tenth say they made up their mind in the week prior to voting.

While voters’ decisions are often too complex to be reduced to any single issue or candidate attribute, the exit poll provides some clues to which topics gained traction in the campaign. Slightly below four in 10 primary voters say they were most looking for a candidate who would fight for them, with another third saying they wanted someone who would share their values, and fewer prioritizing temperament or electability.

More about the exit polls: They are estimates, not precise measurements of the electorate. That’s particularly true for the preliminary set of exit poll numbers, which haven’t yet been weighted to match the final results of the primary. But the results provide a glimpse of the type of voters turning out to participate. The exit poll for South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary was conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. It includes 1,508 interviews with Republican primary voters across 38 different polling places on Election Day. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.

Read more about the exit poll’s findings.

South Carolina voter John Grubich knows former President Donald Trump isn’t perfect, but he’s not planning on supporting anyone else.

“I like everything he did as far as policy, now what you want to critique as a man is fine. If he was perfect he’d be Jesus right?” Grubich told CNN. “He’s not, so there’s gonna be imperfections with any president that we have,” he added.

Grubich voted in Mauldin, South Carolina, which is in Greenville County, which Trump narrowly won in the 2016 primary and carried by a sizable margin in the general election. While Grubich was not a South Carolina resident when Nikki Haley was governor, he told CNN he was concerned that she has some backing that are “more on the democratic side of things.”

“I think she is a RINO,” Grubich said, using an acronym for “Republican in name only.” “I don’t think she has our best interests at heart.” 

Not only does Grubich think Trump is going to blow past Haley in South Carolina, but he believes even in the general election the former president is going to “run away with it, even if they try to pull in a Gavin Newsom last minute, a Michelle Obama, I don’t think it’s enough.”

That said, he does not want his fellow Trump supporters to be complacent at the polls this time around.

“I think that happened possibly last time, we probably thought we had it in the bag and we didn’t show out and show up and we need to do that this cycle,” he told CNN.

Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond called former President Donald Trump’s comments suggesting his mug shot and indictments appeal to Black voters “insulting,” “moronic” and “plain racist.” 

“Donald Trump claiming that Black Americans will support him because of his criminal charges is insulting. It’s moronic. And it’s just plain racist,” Richmond wrote in a statement released by the campaign. “He thinks Black voters are so uninformed that we won’t see through his shameless pandering.” 

At a gala hosted by the Black Conservative Federation in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday, Trump said, “I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it’s election interference and then I got indicted a second time, and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”

Richmond served in the Biden administration as the director of the Office of Public Engagement before departing in April 2022. Prior to that, Richmond served in Congress for 10 years.

If former President Donald Trump wins the South Carolina GOP primary Saturday, he will become the first non-incumbent Republican presidential candidate to win Iowa, New Hampshire and the Palmetto State — a feat that CNN’s Harry Enten says could show his dominance over the party.

The only other non-incumbent candidates who have won all three states have been former President Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Al Gore in 2000, and both Democrats went on to win the nomination.

Remember: All but one GOP presidential candidate since 1980 who won South Carolina went on to become the nominee.

Donald Trump’s campaign issued a memo earlier this week arguing their calculations show the former president will earn the number of delegates needed to become the Republican nominee by March 19 at the latest and that GOP rival Nikki Haley’s campaign was “out of gas” ahead of South Carolina’s primary.

The memo came out ahead of a scheduled speech by Haley in South Carolina which was labeled “the state of the race.”  The memo said “Nikki Haley’s campaign ends Saturday, February 24th, fittingly, in her home state, rejected by those who know her the best.”

“Currently, President Trump has 63 delegates. If we were overly generous and applied a “worst case” model reflecting Nikki Haley’s loss in New Hampshire across the remaining states and Congressional Districts, President Trump would earn 114 Delegates the week following the South Carolina Primary. On Super Tuesday, under this very favorable model for Nikki, President Trump would win 773 Delegates. President Trump would win an additional 162 Delegates the following two weeks, after Super Tuesday. And, on March 19, under this most-generous model for Nikki, President Trump would win the Republican nomination for President,” the memo reads. 

The memo continues, “Now, if we ignore this model and follow what the current data — both public and private — suggests, President Trump will win the Republican nomination one week earlier, on March 12, with 1,223 Delegates. Which is all to say, before March Madness tips off next month, President Trump will be the Republican nominee for President.”

Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said the next steps for the campaign include planning for the Republican convention and continuing to fundraise while gearing up for a potential general election rematch with President Joe Biden. 

President Joe Biden thanked campaign organizers in Michigan and taped two radio interviews Saturday ahead of Tuesday’s primary in the state, which will serve as a key test of Biden’s handling of Gaza with voters.

It comes as the campaign works to maintain support that proved instrumental in 2020 as Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib calls for voters in Michigan — home to one of the largest populations of Arab Americans and Muslims — to vote uncommitted in the state’s primary in protest of the administration’s support for Israel. 

The Biden campaign said Saturday that the president joined a campaign organizing call to thank volunteers on the ground and taped two radio interviews with The Bushman Show and Afternoon Jamz with P.A. that will air Monday.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes joined Saturday’s call, according to Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt. Earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris also visited Michigan and joined a roundtable, alongside Whitmer, focused on abortion rights.

South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, a key Biden advocate, acknowledged concerns over Biden’s ability to maintain a Democratic coalition in 2024 amid criticism over his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict, but he expressed optimism.  

South Carolina primary voters flocked to Jennie Moore Elementary School in Mount Pleasant on Saturday, with several participants waiting for close to an hour to cast their votes.

The town is part of Charleston County, one of the counties in South Carolina that supported the Democratic candidate in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. 

That dynamic was reflected in interviews CNN conducted with a series of voters on Saturday, some of whom were Democrats who said they were proud to take advantage of the state’s primary registration rules, which allow members of any party to participate.

Kelly Missel, 53, is once such registered Democrat who voted for Haley: “Her campaign has been texting me three times a day, sometimes for weeks now, saying that you can vote. I didn’t know that we could vote in the Republican primary, so it educated me. I think it’s pretty smart.”

Missel said she believes Haley is hoping Democrats will “save her from Trump.”

More from voters: Roy Layman, a 78-year-old registered Republican who voted for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, told CNN he voted for Haley because he was impressed with her performance as the state’s former governor. He added that he believed Trump has been “a mess” over the past two years, and that he wasn’t sure if he would support him over President Joe Biden in a general election.

Dave Alfred, 70, told CNN he voted for the former president because “he’s the only guy in my lifetime that’s put the country on the right path, period.” He named energy independence and border security as top issues.

Former President Donald Trump labeled himself a “political dissident” Saturday, telling attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference that a vote for him is their “ticket back to freedom” and “passport out of tyranny.” 

“In many ways, we’re living in hell right now because the fact is, Joe Biden is a threat to democracy,” Trump said. “I stand before you today, not only as your past and hopefully future president but as a proud political dissident. I am a dissident.”

It was a striking phrase coming after the recent death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny whose plight Trump previously compared his legal woes to. He told Fox News during a town hall Tuesday that the $355 million settlement in the New York criminal fraud case is a “form of Navalny.”

Trump also told CPAC attendees that Election Day in November will be the new “Liberation Day” for “hardworking Americans.” He added that people would “deliver a reckoning like they haven’t even imagined before” before issuing a warning for his critics.

“But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters, who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day,” Trump said.

The former president stressed that winning the election would be the “ultimate vindication” for himself and his supporters.

“Your liberty will be our ultimate reward, and the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge,” Trump said. “That’s what I want. Success will be our revenge.”

Former President Donald Trump has a lead in the Republican presidential primary, but the process is far from over. The next step is South Carolina’s primary, which is taking place today.

Here’s what to know about the GOP contest ahead of polls closing at 7 p.m. ET:

The candidates: The major candidates include Trump, the current front-runner to get the Republican nomination for the third straight presidential election. His top rival is former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also served as US ambassador to the United Nations for part of Trump’s term as president.

Who can vote? South Carolina’s primaries are open, which means any registered voter can take part in either the Republican primary or the Democratic primary, but not both. The Democratic primary took place earlier in February. President Joe Biden won easily.

Who has been ahead in the GOP primary? Even though Haley was the state’s governor, Trump has been the clear leader in pre-primary polling. He gets the support of more than 60% of GOP primary voters in several recent polls – far outpacing Haley, who has hovered around 30%. Trump has held rallies in the state, but much of his campaigning has been done from courtrooms in New York, Washington, DC, and Florida, where he faces a series of criminal prosecutions. He was also ordered to pay $355 million in a civil fraud case last week.

If Trump wins South Carolina, is the primary over? Not technically. It will ultimately take 1,215 delegates for Trump, or anyone, to secure the Republican nomination. Just 50 delegates are at stake in South Carolina. Heading into the South Carolina primary, Trump has the lead with 63 delegates to Haley’s 17. So there is still a long way to go. The largest pot of delegates is up for grabs on Super Tuesday, March 5.

What are the state’s demographics? As of the 2020 Census, the state was about 62% White, about one-quarter Black and nearly 7% Hispanic. But the Republican primary voters are overwhelmingly White. When Trump won the South Carolina primary with more than 32% of the vote in 2016, just about 1% of the GOP primary voters were Black.

Here’s what else to know about the South Carolina GOP Primary

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley this week reiterated her plans to continue her White House bid against former President Donald Trump ahead of the South Carolina primary.

“Some of you—perhaps a few of you in the media—came here today to see if I’m dropping out of the race. Well, I’m not. Far from it,” Haley said in a speech in Greenville Tuesday.

Haley vowed she is not exiting the race now, saying she will continue to compete in the primary past the South Carolina primary and through Super Tuesday on March 5.

“That’s why I refuse to quit. South Carolina will vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I’ll still be running for president. I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m campaigning every day, until the last person votes, because I believe in a better America and a brighter future for our kids.”

Haley’s remark come as she continues to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination, though he has won every delegate contest so far and holds a wide lead over Haley in her own home state, making many question the path forward for the former governor’s campaign.

Haley had previously said that she had to do better in the South Carolina primary than she did in New Hampshire primary – where she lost to Trump by 11 points – but she is no longer saying that she must hit that goal.

Read more about Haley’s bid for president.

Two resolutions are currently circulating within the Republican National Committee that would potentially, if passed by members, slow former President Donald Trump’s attempt to reshape the structure of the committee, according to a draft obtained by CNN.

The first resolution would ensure that the RNC and its leadership maintain neutrality “and not take on additional staff from any of the Presidential campaigns until a nominee is clearly determined by reaching 1,215 delegates.” 

Trump said earlier this month he planned to install senior adviser Chris LaCivita as chief operating officer of the RNC and publicly endorsed North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as committee co-chairs.

The second resolution would bar the RNC from paying the legal bills of either candidate unrelated to the election. Trump has accumulated a tab of nearly $550 million in two civil cases, and he faces 91 criminal charges in four other cases.

Committeeman Henry Barbour of Mississippi sponsored both of these resolutions, according to multiple sources familiar, and he argued that the Trump campaign’s moves to elevate new leadership at the committee was presumptuous.

“I think the Trump campaign has jumped the gun on taking over the RNC before it has the requisite delegates,” Barbour said in an interview with CNN on Saturday. “I just think it’s important that we stand up and follow the rules.”

The South Carolina Republican presidential primary is usually the most important contest of the nominating season. The state’s propensity for picking the eventual GOP nominee is unmatched by any other early-voting state. Since 1980, the only Republican to win the nomination without winning South Carolina was Mitt Romney in 2012.

This year, if history holds, it could mean the beginning of the end for Nikki Haley’s campaign. Republican front-runner Donald Trump is dominating the polls. The former president has led every single poll in the state by at least 20 points this year. Surveys that meet CNN’s standards for publication have Trump up by at least 30 points this month.

To put that in perspective, I can’t find a single example of a well-polled presidential primary in the past 40 years in which a candidate has overcome the deficit Haley currently faces in her home state.

(Democrat Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Michigan primary win was the biggest recent shocker, and CNN approved surveys had him down by less than 20 points going into the election.)

Another ominous sign for Haley: Since the modern primary era began in 1972, no major-party nominee has ever lost his or her home state during the primary season. To that point, Trump has shown a knack for beating fellow Republicans in the states where they were first elected.

Keep reading about what a Trump win in South Carolina could mean.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley doubled down on her comments that she believes “embryos are babies,” but said “that doesn’t mean that everybody else has to think that embryos are babies.”

“We always want fertility options to be available to parents as they are trying to have babies of their own,” Haley, who used in vitro fertilization to conceive her son, told Fox News on Saturday. “Any decisions made with the embryos, it needs to be between the parents and the physician, period,” she said, adding that the government should not “intrude” in those conversations.

Remember: A ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court this week thrust the issue of IVF into the 2024 campaign. In the first-of-its-kind ruling, the court said frozen embryos are children — and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death. The ruling could have profound impacts on how the fertility industry in Alabama operates, critics warned.

Former President Donald Trump also said Friday that he supports women having access to in vitro fertilization and that state lawmakers must “act quickly to find an immediate solution” to keep the procedure available in Alabama.

CNN’s Christina Maxouris contributed reporting to this post.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley officially voted in the South Carolina primary Saturday morning.

The former Palmetto State governor was joined by her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, her son, Nalin, her daughter, Rena, and her son-in-law, Josh, at a polling site in Kiawah Island, South Carolina.

Before casting her ballot, the candidate assisted her mother with the voting process. Nalin Haley also voted ahead of his mother.

At this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, attendees speculated whom Donald Trump might pick as a running mate and weighed the pros and cons of his potential choices.

Edward X. Young, a 64-year-old visiting from Brick, New Jersey, liked the idea of a “Donald/Donalds” ticket with Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, which he said would make for a “beautiful bumper sticker,” and he called Vivek Ramaswamy “very exciting.”

“But then again, he’s just like a younger version of Trump,” he said. “Maybe you need a balance.”

Bode Brewer, who will be of voting age for the first time in November, thinks the diversity of the candidates under consideration could be an advantage.

“I’m not a fan of identity politics most times,” said the 17-year-old from Reading, Pennsylvania. “But I think with, as the party is diversifying, I think we do owe it to our voters to get a candidate that is more diverse.”

With the country barreling toward a Trump-Biden rematch, several CPAC attendees think the party’s next vice presidential pick should help usher in a new generation.

“I believe we need new people,” said Genilde Guerra of Miami. “We cannot go to the old politicians that everyone’s so tired of.”

Read more here.

‘All Over The Map’ is a CNN project tracking the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of the voters who will pick the next US president. Here’s what a South Carolina voter said.

Craig Thomas, who describes himself as “conservative, some areas libertarian,” lived in Tennessee when Donald Trump caught his attention in 2016.

Trump, he thought then, was an outsider – and a vote for him would send a message to Washington. “It was like, alright, like this is good,” said Thomas. “Let’s blow some things up.”

Now, Thomas lives in Charleston and is voting for former Gov. Nikki Haley – to send a message to his two children.

He is tired of all the personal attacks and all the anger and wants a president who is also a role model. Haley, he said, “brings very similar policy positions, but definitely without the drama.”

One recent MAGA conspiracy theory hit too close to home for Thomas. Influential MAGA Media personalities started circulating conspiracy theories that Taylor Swift was part of a sprawling psychological operations plot staged by the NFL and Democratic Party to deliver the 2024 presidential election to President Joe Biden.

“I don’t think there’s any sort of a crazy conspiracy between the NFL and Taylor Swift and everything else just showing up for a Biden coronation,” Thomas said. “How do I look at my daughter, who is a huge Taylor Swift fan, and this guy just attacking Taylor Swift, just because she is going to support another candidate, right.”

“And other things like that. And having those conversations with them. It does matter. And it does matter who you support,” he added.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Saturday blasted former President Donald Trump’s comments in which he suggested that his criminal indictments and mug shot appealed to Black voters.

“We can make him the primary nominee if we want to, but we, Republicans, will lose come November. This is a huge warning sign. We have to stop with the chaos,” she continued. 

At a Friday gala hosted by the Black Conservative Federation in Columbia, South Carolina, Trump cited his four indictments in saying that “Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”

He also claimed that Black Americans have “embraced” his mug shot more than anyone else.

“It’s incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know they do shirts,” Trump said.

Arizona Senate candidate and close Trump ally Kari Lake geared up the CPAC crowd here Saturday ahead of former president Trump’s remarks later this afternoon. 

Lake shared an anecdote about two people who, she said, came to her door and threatened her to stay out of politics. She said they represented “some very powerful people back East.”

“I can name two powerful people back East who will work for you – and I know there’s an army more – Donald J. Trump and Senator Kari Lake,” the Arizona Republican said.

Lake, who lost a bid for Arizona governor in 2022, was among several potential Trump vice presidential picks who spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week.

Chants of “USA, USA, USA” broke out at one point during her speech.

Lake also ginned up enthusiasm from the crowd in celebrating recent layoffs at several news organizations, joking that she was “OK if we have high unemployment” if it puts the “fake news” out of the workforce.

She encouraged voters to “get involved and help President Trump,” as well as her own Senate campaign in Arizona.

My Pillow owner and right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell encouraged the audience at a conservative gathering Saturday to only vote on Election Day and said “anybody that tells you to vote early is wrong.”

In a speech riddled with falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election, Lindell told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in the Washington, DC, area that he believes same-day voting makes it “harder for them to cheat.”

He also accused Democrats of committing fraud during the 2020 election. There is no evidence for such claims. On Wednesday, a federal judge confirmed Lindell will have to pay $5 million over a contest he initiated that challenged people to prove that data Lindell had provided about the 2020 election wasn’t legitimate.  

Lindell’s comments come as GOP officials have sought to encourage Republicans to participate in early voting even as other Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, have cast doubt on the validity of early voting methods.

Ahead of tonight’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary, data from the state’s election commission shows that more than 205,000 ballots were cast during the primary’s early voting period, which ran from February 12-22.

Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign has for weeks been looking ahead to the Republican primary in South Carolina, while Trump has led in every poll of the state.

Here are four things to watch for tonight as the Palmetto State votes:

Can Trump deliver the KO?: Barring a major upset, most discussions about the primary will, by late Saturday, turn to Trump’s margin of victory. The question: Is there a deficit that could make Haley rethink her plan to stay in the race regardless of the result?

Haley and her campaign have repeatedly brushed off any suggestion of ending her bid before next month, but she wouldn’t be the first candidate to change her tune when confronted with ugly numbers.

Haley’s path to victory?: Much of what made Haley a national political figure – like her call as governor for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds – is anathema to the state’s conservative GOP base. She is on the outs with nearly all state party leaders. Trump, meanwhile, has dominated there.

The primary in South Carolina is open, meaning Democrats and independents can cast ballots in the GOP race. Haley is hoping the do-or-die nature of the moment will inspire a late, anti-Trump outburst. One that might carry into other states with open primaries, such as Michigan next week and Texas and Virginia on Super Tuesday.

Can Trump expand his base?: One of the main concerns facing Trump’s campaign – one highlighted by Haley in the run-up to South Carolina – is his weak showing among independents, which was evident in New Hampshire.

With independents allowed to vote in the South Carolina contest as well, we might get some insight into whether Trump has done anything to help his cause with these potential general election swing voters.

The delegate math: For all the expectation-setting and speculative arguments, there is still only one concrete measure of success: delegates. The eventual nominee will need 1,215 of them.

Trump currently leads Haley, 63 to 17. It’s obviously not insurmountable, and with 50 at stake in South Carolina, Haley could theoretically jump into the lead. Much more likely, though, is that she will be shut out entirely. South Carolina awards 29 of its delegates to the statewide winner and three apiece to the leader in each of its seven congressional districts.

Read more here.

David Saldana likes Nikki Haley and considered casting his vote in the South Carolina Republican primary for the state’s former governor. But in the final days of the race, he said he decided to support Donald Trump – flaws and all.

“I wish he conducted himself a little more professional, but he’s proven he can do it,” Saldana said. “Even with all his flaws, I think he’s still the best man for the job.”

Saldana, who lives just outside of Charleston in Berkeley County, said he admired Haley’s tenacity and respected her record as governor. But he believes the South Carolina primary should put an exclamation point on the Republican presidential nominating contest and the party should begin to focus on winning back the White House.

“It’s a two-person race at this point – Biden and Trump,” Saldana said. “I just feel the numbers show that she doesn’t seem to have the support.”

While Saldana carries only one vote, his rationale offers a broader window into the mindset of other voters we’ve met in the closing days of the primary contest.

As Haley tries to make the primary a referendum on Trump, many Republicans are eager to start taking on Biden and worry that Haley could be delaying the inevitable and hurting Trump in the process.

“I’m not happy with the way things are going with Biden’s ‘build back better,’ Saldana said, reciting President Joe Biden’s often-used slogan. “Nothing seems to be built back better, in my opinion.”

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley emphasized Saturday that she doesn’t think former President Donald Trump can win a general election while adding that she isn’t “banking” on him getting convicted in order to help her win the GOP nomination.

“What I’m banking on the fact is he cannot win a general election,” Haley said during an interview on NBC Today. She cited polling that showed her leading President Joe Biden comfortably in a general election matchup compared with a narrower edge for Trump over Biden, within the margin of error.

Asked if she has had conversations with party leaders assuring her that they would support her if Trump was convicted, Haley responded, “No, I haven’t had any conversations about that. This is not about conviction. This is about chaos. There is chaos all around him.”

Haley has vowed to remain in the GOP race regardless of the result of tonight’s South Carolina Republican primary, which Trump is heavily favored to win.

Separately, Haley again weighed in on the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent IVF ruling, saying that the “government doesn’t need to get into something this sensitive.”

“This should be between the doctor and the parents period. … I want to make sure we don’t have anything that hampers the idea that parents and a doctor can decide these fertility treatments. I want there to be as many IVF processes and treatment centers as we can,” she said.

President Joe Biden raised more than $42 million for his presidential campaign and the Democratic Party in January, a sizable haul that shows the party’s donor class is still firmly behind the president despite anxiety around his reelection run.

The campaign announced it ended the month with $130 million on hand, the largest figure amassed by a Democratic presidential candidate at this point in the campaign cycle. The Biden campaign and Democrats have so far outpaced former President Donald Trump and the Republican primary field in fundraising as well.

Why this matters: The January numbers are a bright spot for the president’s team amidst a period of intense Democratic handwringing over the campaign’s operations, low polling and a fresh spotlight on Biden’s age and memory in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur’s report. The president and Democrats have consistently posted high fundraising totals — nearly $278 million since April – from high dollar events and grassroots pushes, and January marked the campaign’s best fundraising month with small dollar donors, the campaign said.

The January fundraising disclosure came as the president embarked on what is expected to be a lucrative three-day fundraising swing through California. The West Coast push is playing out less than two weeks after Hur’s report put the president’s age and mental acuity front and center in the 2024 campaign.

Even as some donors privately express deep concerns at the challenges Biden faces over the coming months, there is near-universal acknowledgement that the opportunity for a Democratic alternative to step forward has long since passed, and that Biden — for all of his struggles — is now what’s standing in the way of another Trump presidency.

Read more about the Biden fundraising figures.

Performing well in primaries and caucuses equals delegates, and the larger goal is amassing the magic number of delegates to secure a nomination before delegate voting at the party convention.

Winning the GOP presidential nomination requires at least 1,215 out of 2,429 delegates awarded as part of the primary process.

Here’s a look at Republican primary contests happening across the country — and how many delegates are at stake in each:

After taking the Conservative Political Action Conference stage Friday to a crisply edited hype video, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik invoked Donald Trump about two dozen times as she heaped praise on the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

The day before, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds had mentioned the former president by name just twice when opening the annual GOP confab, but he sounded an awful lot like Trump when laying out his foreign policy vision.

Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii claimed not to know that attendees could choose her in a poll to pick Trump’s potential running mate.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem took several shots at some of the other Republicans in the mix to join the GOP presidential ticket during her turn at the mic.

Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who delivered the keynote address at Friday night’s dinner, spoke of a “war” ongoing “between those of us who love the United States of America and our founding ideals and a fringe minority who hates this country and what we stand for.” He suggested Trump would be a commander in chief “to lead us to victory in that war.”

The jockeying to become Trump’s vice presidential pick, playing out behind the scenes for weeks if not longer, has spilled into the open at this week’s CPAC, the country’s annual gathering of conservatives. In what amounted to an audition to be Trump’s No. 2, the program inside the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center at times appeared more like a casting call for some of the most talked-about contenders for the job.

Read more here.

Former President Donald Trump suggested Friday that his criminal indictments and mug shot appeal to Black voters and claimed that “what’s happening to (him) happens to them.”

“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it’s election interference and then I got indicted a second time, and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges across the cases, told a gathering of Black conservatives here, on the eve of the state’s first-in-the-South Republican presidential primary.

The GOP front-runner also claimed that Black Americans have “embraced” his mug shot more than anyone else.

“The mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. It’s incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know they do shirts,” he said.

Trump, who has a history of using racist language, also railed against President Joe Biden, his likely general election rival, accusing him of being a “vicious racist.”

The Biden campaign responded by referring to the former president as an “incompetent, anti-Black tyrant.”

Read more on Trump’s remarks and the reaction to them here.

Ahead of today’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary, 217,600 ballots have already been cast, according to data from the South Carolina Election Commission. 

Of those, 205,099 ballots were cast during the early voting period, which ran from February 12-22, and 12,501 mail ballots have been returned. 

In total 14,084 mail ballots have been issued. All mail ballots must be received by the close of polls today. 

The number of pre-election ballots cast well exceeds the roughly 131,000 total votes cast in the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary earlier this month, although that’s to be expected, given the state’s Republican lean and the lack of competitiveness in the Democratic contest. 

This month’s presidential primaries in South Carolina are the first since the state began allowing anyone to vote early in person in 2022. South Carolinians who wish to vote by mail still need a valid excuse. 

Before Americans pick a president in November, they get to pick the candidates in a series of primaries and caucuses. It’s a wonky process that has evolved throughout the country’s history and continues to evolve today.

Here are key things to know before the polls close in Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary:

What is a primary? It’s an election to select candidates, usually for a particular political party, to appear on the general election ballot.

Who is running in the primaries? For Republicans, former President Donald Trump has long been the front-runner, but former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is still in the race. For Democrats, Joe Biden won the state primary earlier in February.

Who can vote in a presidential primary? It varies by state. For example, some states have open primaries — including South Carolina — meaning anyone can take part in the primary, even if they aren’t registered party members. Other states have closed primaries, meaning you have to join the party in order to vote. Primaries are generally conducted in polling places like any other election. That’s different from caucuses, which are more like neighborhood meetings. People show up and lobby for their candidates.

How is the nomination ultimately determined? Voters cast ballots for candidates, but they are really selecting delegates for the party conventions, which take place over the summer. Delegates can either be apportioned through a winner-take-all system, meaning the top candidate in a state’s primary gets all of that state’s delegates, or they can be apportioned proportionally to the primary election results.

Get up to speed on the presidential primaries.

Ahead of Saturday’s primary, South Carolina supporters of former President Donald Trump shared their thoughts on controversial topics from his comments on the Alabama IVF ruling to him saying Russia can do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defense and more.

Here’s what they had to say:

On the Alabama IVF ruling: Katie Alexander, who said she underwent IVF to get pregnant with her daughter, said she thought the Alabama Supreme Court ruling frozen embryos were children was a “dangerous slippery slope.”   

“It makes it very, very muddy,” she said of the ruling, calling for new laws on the procedure to be passed.

On Trump using campaign funds to pay for legal fees: Some supporters were split on whether Trump should be using campaign funds to pay for his legal bills.

“Well, I don’t know what the laws are but I will tell you that people who donate to Trump’s campaign would have no problem with him using the money to pay some of his bills. I really believe that,” Carolyn Corcoran said. 

Barbara Gobien said, “It doesn’t matter to me if they want to use it.”

Ruth Carroll expressed distrust in media reports and said she’d need to see proof first of Trump using campaign fees for his bills. But when asked if hypothetically it would be something she would support, Carroll said she would not. 

On Trump’s NATO comments: Some supporters said they thought Trump wasn’t being serious when he encouraged Russia to do whatever it wanted to NATO countries that didn’t meet spending guidelines, and believed the US would still protect those countries if Trump were reelected.  

“He says things in a kind of way that people just don’t understand,” Corcoran said. “But I don’t take what he says as meaning anything serious.”

But Barbara Gobien, said she agreed with Trump’s comments.

“Nobody should be allowed to be part of anything if they don’t pay their share and too many countries have lived off our backs and it’s about time that changed,” Gobien said. “Trump’s the first person that made that statement and he started getting people to pay their fair share.”

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has repeatedly reiterated that she will continue her White House bid despite calls to drop out as she trails former President Donald Trump in polling amid multiple primary defeats.

Last weekend, she told a crowd in South Carolina ahead of the state’s primary that she “will never give up.” 

“Why would I give up when 59% of Americans say Donald Trump is too old and Joe Biden is too old. Why would I give up when the majority of Americans disapprove of Joe Biden and a majority of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump,” Haley said during a campaign event in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She pointed to the latest ABC/Ipsos poll that finds most Americans see both Joe Biden and Trump as too old for another term. 

Despite recent polling showing Haley more than 30 points behind Trump in her home state, Haley encouraged voters to ignore media coverage about the state of the race. She highlighted Trump’s mounting legal troubles, arguing he “cannot win a general election.”

She followed up with placing the blame on the former president for political losses the Republican party has taken in recent weeks and asked the crowd: “How many more times do we have to lose before we finally figured out that he’s the problem?”

Haley urged South Carolinians to head to the polls. “I need you to take a yard sign. I need you to go vote and I need you to take 10 people to go vote with you,” she said.

A New Orleans street magician who has no fixed address, has never voted and claims to hold a world record in fork bending might seem like an unlikely candidate to be involved in a high-tech political scandal.

But on Friday, Paul Carpenter – whose magical feats include escaping a straitjacket in less than 11 seconds – entered the national political spotlight when he revealed himself as the creator of an AI-generated robocall imitating President Joe Biden’s voice that was sent to New Hampshire voters.

Carpenter told CNN in an interview that he was hired to create the fake audio by a political consultant working for the campaign of Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, a long-shot Democratic challenger to Biden. He provided text messages, Venmo logs and other records to support his account.

The robocall, which urged Democrats to skip voting in the New Hampshire primary, has spurred law enforcement investigations and worries about the future of AI’s impact on American politics. Carpenter said that he didn’t know how the audio would be used and was “heartbroken” that his work could have convinced people not to cast their ballots.

“I’m a magician and a hypnotist,” he said. “I’m not in the political realm – I just got thrown into this thing.”

The Phillips consultant, Steve Kramer, declined to comment Friday.

Phillips said Friday that he was “disgusted” by the allegations. “While I don’t know the person in question, such behavior is despicable and I trust will be investigated by authorities,” the candidate wrote on X.

Read more about the unusual scandal here.

‘All Over The Map’ is a CNN project tracking the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of the voters who will pick the next US president. Here’s what a South Carolina voter said.

Joy Rendulic moved to Pawleys Island, South Carolina, in 2016. While she was impressed with then Gov. Nikki Haley, she has consistently voted for Donald Trump for president. She said she will vote for him again in the state’s GOP presidential primary.

“I totally believe that God has assigned him to this position,” Rendulic said of Trump. “That is my true belief.”

When asked about what happened in 2020, she said “that was a mess” and argued that it was “so illegal.”

When CNN mentioned all the recounts and court cases Trump lost, including cases decided by judges Trump appointed that upheld now-President Joe Biden’s victory, Rendulic was adamant.

She represents an important slice of the Trump base: for Trump no matter what. These voters echo his false claims about rigged elections and bogus investigations and they stand by Trump even when he does things counter to their priorities. You find a lot of them in South Carolina, one reason Trump consistently leads the primary polls despite Haley’s home state status.

Rendulic, for example, lists abortion – or the “right to life,” as she puts it – as the reason her last vote for a Democrat for president was Jimmy Carter. But she offers no criticism of Trump when we point out he has recently criticized some state abortion restrictions as too harsh and has warned it could be a losing issue for Republicans.

“I haven’t thought about that too much, probably,” Rendulic said. “I want it to be right to life.”

No doubt Trump gets her vote.

As former President Donald Trump marches toward the GOP presidential nomination, he is juggling a busy election calendar and multiple legal events related to the four criminal indictments he faces.

Here’s a look at how his colliding calendar is shaping up so far:

With presidential primaries underway and a 2020 general election rematch seemingly the most likely outcome, a CNN poll conducted by SSRS released early February shows former President Donald Trump narrowly ahead of President Joe Biden in what’s shaping up to be a close contest nationally.

The poll highlights voters’ conflicted feelings about the leading candidates. Broad majorities of Democrats and Republicans say they’d be satisfied if their party’s candidate won such a rematch. Still, a sizable minority of voters express a desire for another option if Biden and Trump are the nominees.

Overall, 49% of registered voters say they would back Trump if an election between the two were held today, while 45% support Biden and 5% say they’d vote for someone else.

Those numbers are identical to CNN polling on the contest in the fall, and the demographic dynamics of the contest appear to be steady – with a wide education gap among the most notable demographic divides, and smaller differences by age or race than in other recent presidential elections.

Read more about the poll’s findings.

‘All Over The Map’ is a CNN project tracking the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of the voters who will pick the next US president. Here’s what a South Carolina voter said.

Billy Pierce has lived in Hartsville – about two hours inland from the South Carolina coast – all his 70 years except for a stint in the Navy. He called himself a likely voter for Donald Trump in the primary, and described the choice between Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as “the lesser of two evils.”

Pierce is not an election denier. He does believe it was wrong that many states adopted new voting rules during the 2020 pandemic, but said Trump should have honored the results once all his challenges were exhausted.

Nor is Pierce a fan of the former president’s toxic tone.

“If he’d just shut up and, you know, got off Twitter and that kind of stuff, he’d have made a great president,” Pierce said.

But Pierce is very much in line with Trump on policy matters, listing the border as his top priority.

“Shut it down,” is Pierce’s desire, though he agrees with Trump that congressional Republicans should not pass a border package before the November election – even if it would slow the flow of illegal border crossings. “This is a Democratic ploy” designed to help President Joe Biden, Pierce said.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley dismissed questions about potentially mounting a third party White House campaign.

“You know my focus right now is running in a Republican primary, it always has been,” she said during a Fox News interview this week. “I’ve never talked to the No Labels people, that’s not anything that I’ve been focused on. What I’ve been focused on is what we’re going to do to change the course of what’s happening in our country.”

“We can be tough on the issues, we can strongly disagree on issues, but we can’t do it with two candidates who literally just hate on the other side and encourage their supporters to hate on the other side; it’s not normal, none of this is normal, and it should never be normal in America, and we have the chance to change that,” she continued.

When pressed again on her interest in running on a third party ticket, Haley was more direct, saying, “No, I haven’t, that’s not anything I’ve looked at, that’s not anything I’m thinking about.”

She continued to make the case that voters want a candidate offering an alternative to a Trump-Biden 2024 rematch.

Former President Donald Trump’s leadership PAC paid out more than $2.9 million to law firms last month as his legal troubles mounted and racked up an additional $1.9 million in unpaid legal bills at the end of January, according to a filing Tuesday night with federal regulators.

Save America’s largest payment – more than $583,000 – went to the law firm of John Lauro – who is representing the former president in the federal election subversion case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

Save America, a political action committee seeded with money Trump raised after his 2020 White House loss, has been the primary vehicle for underwriting legal bills for Trump and some witnesses in the cases surrounding him.

Last year alone, Save America spent more than $55 million on legal bills, accounting for nearly 85% of its total spending in 2023, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, faces 91 criminal indictments across four jurisdictions and now owes hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties stemming from a recent pair judgments in civil cases. 

CNN’s Alex Leeds Matthew contributed reporting.