Trump wins easily in South Carolina

It was a dramatic evening in South Carolina Saturday, as businessman Donald Trump declared victory in the state’s Republican presidential primary, while his two closest rivals found themselves locked in a dead heat for second place.

With 99.9 percent of the precincts reporting, the results showed Trump with 32.5 percent of the vote, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida with 22.5 percent, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas with 22.3 percent. Trump won every county in the state, except for two, Richland and Charleston, which were carried by Rubio.

But one of the most poignant moments of the night came as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dropped out of the presidential race after disappointing finishes in the nation’s first three nominating contests. In South Carolina he captured only 7.8 percent of the vote, placing slighting higher than Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Less than a year after many pundits considered Bush the front-runner for the GOP nomination, the son and brother of two former presidents conceded it was time for him to hang up his own ambitions for the nation’s highest office: “The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision.”

Bush never had a breakout moment in a campaign season that pitted him against Trump—an unexpected opponent who delighted in bashing the former governor and assailing his brother, former President George W. Bush.

Bush often seemed flummoxed and offended by Trump’s bombastic popularity, and in the end it appears Bush made a decision: He wants Trump to lose the nomination more than he wants to continue his own quest for it.

Many are wondering if Kasich and Carson might come to similar conclusions in the days ahead, but Kasich seemed intent to focus on a strategy to gain support in northern states after his second place finish in New Hampshire. On Saturday, he spent the day campaigning in Vermont and Massachusetts.

Back in South Carolina, Rubio declared the GOP contest “a three-man race” between Trump, Cruz, and himself.

It was a less-than-satisfying finish for Cruz Saturday, who developed a strong ground game in South Carolina and banked on his appeal to evangelical and strongly conservative voters.

In a state where as many as 70 percent of Republican voters identify as evangelical, losing to Trump by 10 points was a blow to Cruz’s evangelical-based strategy, particularly as the GOP turns to a slate of contests in other Southern states with large numbers of evangelical Christians.

As WORLD has pointed out in the past, it’s often not clear what criteria—if any—polls use to define “evangelical.” Still, Trump’s comfortable 10-point margin of victory in South Carolina suggests he did pick up a swath of Christian support in the state.

That has confounded some evangelical leaders in South Carolina, but it also stumped at least one candidate. After last week’s debate in Greenville, S.C., Carson—a candidate who once had strong support from Christians for his own campaign—said, “I don’t know what evangelicals are looking for.”

Some churchgoers I’ve spoken to at Trump rallies in South Carolina have explained their support for the business mogul this way: National security and the economy are the most critical issues facing the nation, and they believe Trump will “do something” about those problems.

Questions about the reality television star’s liberal proclamations in the past or concerns about his character and crass style don’t seem to outweigh other issues. Neither do his bizarre claims of Christian faith. (Trump has said he’s a Christian, but that he’s never asked God for forgiveness.)

It’s a perplexing dynamic in a state where Christians expressed significant concerns about the Mormonism of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential run.

A few weeks ago, I asked Oran Smith of the Palmetto Family Council whether he thought Trump supporters in South Carolina were as concerned about Trump’s outlandish claims of being an evangelical Christian as they were about Romney being a Mormon.

Smith said no.

Instead, he said, many evangelicals knew Romney was sincere about his Mormonism, and they worried he’d give the religion too much visibility as president. In contrast, they don’t believe Trump’s claims of Christianity, so they don’t worry he’d be representative of evangelicals.

One evangelical Trump supporter told me at a rally last month, “He’s in the Bible Belt, so I guess he’ll say whatever he needs to say.” But the same supporter believed Trump on most everything else.

But Trump does face his limits.

While the candidate has won primaries New Hampshire and South Carolina, his numbers suggest he’s maintaining his support base but not growing it. With Rubio picking up support since his poor showing in New Hampshire and Cruz still hanging on to second place nationally in the polls, Trump could face an imminent challenge to his front-runner status—especially if the field winnows even more between now and Tuesday’s Nevada caucuses and the all-important Super Tuesday primaries on March 1.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton picked up an important win Saturday in the Nevada caucuses, defeating Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 53 percent to 47 percent. The Democrats hold their primary in South Carolina next Saturday.