30,000 more people voted for Hillary Clinton in South Carolina than for Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each won their respective South Carolina primary contest handily, and each has cemented their position as their party’s frontrunner. It now seems plausible, perhaps even probable, that the two will face each other in the general election. The narrative we keep hearing from Trump himself is that he’s single handedly driving enthusiasm and turnout, while the media narrative on Clinton is that her campaign lacks enthusiasm. But the people of South Carolina just painted a very different picture for us. As it turns out, Hillary got far more votes in the state than Donald did.
Let’s be up front about this: it doesn’t tell us anything about which way the state would lean in a general election matchup between the two. South Carolina is a conservative leaning state to begin with, and any republican would likely win the state over any democrat. But that’s not what this comparison is about. Instead it’s about defining each candidate’s real enthusiasm level by measuring their relative abilities to drive people to the polls. The republican primary in South Carolina saw nearly twice as many votes overall as did its democratic primary counterpart. But that’s not a sign of republican enthusiasm. Instead it’s a sign of something far different.
Trump managed to drive 240,000 South Carolina republicans to the polls. But nearly twice as many republicans in South Carolina showed up and voted for one of the unpopular candidates just to try to stop Trump. That’s a sign of how deeply divided the party is ideologically, and how badly they don’t want him to be the nominee. The high total turnout isn’t a sign of enthusiasm for any one of the republican candidates. It’s a sign that the party is deep into a civil war, and the sheer number of republicans who dislike Trump so thoroughly that they’re unlikely to support him in the general election. He’s mistaking the divisiveness for enthusiasm.
On the democratic side, Hillary Clinton received 270,000 votes in South Carolina, while just 98,000 democrats disliked her enough to bother showing up and vote against her. That suggests that among the democrats who aren’t in love with her, even the ones who say they prefer her democratic opponent when they’re polled, most of them don’t dislike her enough to bother showing up just to vote against her. In other words she’s not as deeply or widely disliked by dissenting democrats as Trump is by dissenting republicans. That’s a strong indicator in favor of her general election chances, where she’ll need large numbers of democrats to support her.
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