There was a time, two decades ago, when winning the South Carolina Republican presidential primary was a huge deal, the kind of victory that would go a long way toward clinching the nomination. This year, as Politico’s Jonathan Martin concluded with regret a few days ago, it was boring. We all knew Donald Trump was going to win, the only question was by how much. Trump had a lead of 23.3 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average. As of this writing, Trump leads Nikki Haley by 21 percentage points, and Haley won’t get much credit for narrowly beating the metaphorical point spread. Haley keeps demonstrating that there’s a segment of the electorate that’s willing to show up and vote for someone besides Trump in a Republican primary, and it’s not small. But it’s just not a majority anywhere. Barring Haley performing really well in one congressional district tonight, Trump will win all 50 available delegates.
To the extent Trump has any bad news tonight, it’s that winning these primaries doesn’t seem like as much of an accomplishment when he’s led in the polls all year long.