Update 3: For once the pundits and exit polls were right: shortly after the close of the South Carolina primary polls it was revealed that Trump has a crushing, double digit lead, with about 34% of the vote; followed by Cruz and Rubio who are currently fighting for second spot with 22% of the vote each.
Jeb Bush is fighting for a double digit number, as well as for his professional career which may be cut short after tonight.One thing is clear: thanks to his staggering lead, the media outlets have called it early: Trump takes South Carolina.
And here is the kicker: no-one has won South Carolina and New Hampshire primaries, as Donald Trump now has, without winning the nomination. The GOP establishment is really sweating right noe.
Perhaps most stunning is that Trump's victory could be a clean sweep.
Trump is carrying the counties in SC-01 that have reported so far. Looking like he may sweep all 50 SC delegates. #scprimary
— Geoffrey Skelley (@geoffreyvs)
Here is the moment Trump was declared winner:
The moment Trump world found out it won the SC primary. pic.twitter.com/fJ8WmZd6MQ
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb)
And now, something to contemplate...
Meanwhile, while many campaigns are having primary parties in Columbia, where there's also an active shooter at the mall half an hour away.
Columbia Police Department confirms Columbiana Centre shooting; no victims located at this time – @ColumbiaPDSC #SouthCarolina
— World Aggregate News (@WAGGNews)
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Update 2: with Nevada now decided, attention shifts to South Carolina where the polls close at 7pm Eastern. Here are some observations of what matters to the local voters per exit polls:
#SCPrimary exit poll - angry with federal government: pic.twitter.com/xXdV1xxrtk
— Fox News (@FoxNews)
#SCPrimary exit poll - Top Issue - Terrorism: pic.twitter.com/cc7e6Bgumt
— Fox News (@FoxNews)
#SCPrimary exit poll - Top Issue - Best candidate to handle Supreme Court nominations: pic.twitter.com/UUxkbV0678
— Fox News (@FoxNews)
Update: moments ago first Fox News, and shortly thereafter NBC, AP and other major US news networks, projected Hillary Clinton would be the winner of the Democratic Nevada Caucus.
We now await the closing of the SC polls where most likely a similar fate awaits Donald Trump.
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Live coverage of the Nevada caucus and South Carolina primary
Iowa went to Hillary and Ted Cruz. New Hampshire to Bernie and The Donald. Now, all eyes are on Nevada and South Carolina, where the Democrats and Republicans (respectively) will find out today who voters think deserves the keys to The White House.
In Nevada, Clinton is hoping a push to attack Sanders’ immigration record will carry the Latino vote while the former First Lady has also sought to portray the Vermont senators’ proposals as pipe dreams, especially given the fractious environment on Capitol Hill.
As CNN notes, Clinton began to organize six months ahead of Sanders and “a loss, or even another close finish with Sanders in Nevada, would further chip away at the aura of invincibility that once surrounded her path to the nomination.” Not helping Clinton’s cause with Latino voters is the fact that Sanders’ father was a Polish immigrant, a fact he’s been keen on highlighting in his campaign’s latest TV spots."While I understand that there are people who have differences of opinion with me on immigration reform, there is no justification, no reason, to resort to bigotry and xenophobia when we are talking about Mexicans or we are talking about Muslims," Sanders told a crowd at at the Democratic dinner at the Tropicana Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. "People can disagree about immigration reform, but in the year 2016, we will not allow the Trumps and others to divide us up and appeal to racism, which has done this country so much harm for so many years," he added.
In South Carolina, most polls show Trump holds a commanding lead over the rest of the GOP field and in typically brazen fashion, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination closed out his pitch to voters with a flourish on Friday, suggesting that Muslims should be executed with bullets dipped in pig’s blood and promising to bring back waterboarding which he says is “minimal, minimal, minimal” torture.
"It's bizzare," Marco Rubio said on Saturday of Trump's pig's blood story. "That's not what the United States is all about."
But incredulous as Trump's GOP rivals are at his meteoric rise to the top of the polls, he's clearly saying quite a few things that resonate with the electorate - at least for now. "A Trump victory in South Carolina on Saturday would send new shockwaves through the Republican establishment and possibly augur another strong showing for the front-runner in Southern states with a similar ideological profile on Super Tuesday, March 1," CNN remarks. "Despite an aberration in 2012, when the state's Republican voters went for Newt Gingrich, the South Carolina primary has historically been a barometer of party opinion, going for the eventual nominee in every other presidential primary since 1980."
In other words, if South Carolina goes to Trump, the rest of the field may just be "schlonged." Indeed, a victory in the state would all but prove that Trump is invincible. His lead has held up even after he called George W. Bush a liar last weekend (that's not generally something you want to be doing in South Carolina) and in a testament to just how strong the Trump juggernaut has become, the billionaire even went head to head with God himself when the Pope criticized his stance on immigration.
The bottom line: after Saturday, we will know whether the so-called "protest" candidates are set to bring about a political revolution in America, or whether the entrenched political establishment "empire" is set to "strike back" - as it were.
Here's PredictWise's latest read on South Carolina via Bloomberg:
Going into Saturday, Sanders and Clinton were running neck and neck but early results show Sanders pulling ahead.
Stay tuned for ongoing coverage and updates throughout the night.
