Overview
- Voters will choose the Republican nominee on Tuesday, Aug. 11, with ten candidates on the ballot and roughly 42,000 ballots already cast in early voting.
- Governor Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nordone to fill her late brother Lindsey Graham’s seat and President Trump has formally endorsed her, but she has stayed in Washington to perform Senate duties rather than campaign full time.
- Nordone presided over passage of a sanctions bill bearing Lindsey Graham’s name, an action her campaign highlights while rivals attack her limited campaign experience and record in state government.
- Late July polls are mixed, with different surveys naming Norman, Nordone, Fry or Sanford as frontrunners, and the crowded field makes a runoff on Aug. 25 the most likely outcome.
- The eventual nominee will face Democrat Annie Andrews in November and could shift South Carolina’s Senate focus away from Lindsey Graham’s foreign-policy prominence toward more domestic priorities such as affordability and constituent projects.