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Monday, May 27, 2024By Mary Green
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Heading into November, many Americans’ focuses are on the race for the White House.But in South Carolina, the more pivotal election for many offices will be the June primaries, for which early voting begins Tuesday.
While there are no statewide races in the Palmetto State this year, all 170 seats in the legislature will be up, along with many county and local races, for positions like sheriff and solicitor. Just in the last few months, decisions made at the State House have affected how much South Carolinians pay in taxes, how much money goes toward fixing their roads, and whether they need any training to carry a gun.
For those who want a say in who makes the choices that impact South Carolinians’ day-to-day lives, the primary elections will very likely be their chance.
“Every voice matters,” Lynn Teague with the League of Women Voters of South Carolina said. But in South Carolina, the elections in which they matter most are the primaries. “We are one of the least competitive states in the nation,” Teague said.
There are 170 total seats in the South Carolina General Assembly, 124 in the House of Representatives and 46 in the Senate, all of which are up for election this year. Analyses show as few as six of those 170 seats are in districts that are actually competitive, meaning a candidate from either party could feasibly win. According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, that breaks down to three competitive seats in the House and three in the Senate.
Similarly, just one of South Carolina’s seven US House seats, the First Congressional District in the Lowcountry, is considered somewhat competitive, though it now favors Republicans more after the state’s latest redistricting cycle.
Teague said the overall lack of competitiveness is the result of both gerrymandering and of some parts of the state simply favoring one party over another.
“In many ways, what it tells us is that the primaries are wildly important in this state,” she said. “Day to day, those primary and local races are going to influence your lives much more than the general election of a presidential year.”But these are the races that also typically yield very low voter turnout.“We’re often seeing a lot less than 20% of registered voters show up, and very often, those are our most angry and motivated voters,” Teague said. “If you’re wondering why the polling shows South Carolina’s people as a whole are more moderate than what happens at the State House, it’s because at the State House we see legislators responding to that base that votes in the primary.”
Teague also said these races don’t all have to be so uncompetitive.
“If we had really, really good turnout, all of these predictions could go out the window,” she said.
Watch the full interview at the link above.
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