COLUMBIA, South Carolina — South Carolina’s Republican Party is predicting a record voter-turnout for the GOP primary tonight, which they say is a good sign for the general election in November.
“Over 650,000 people will have voted in S.C. today compared with 80,000 in Nevada,” Chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party Matt Moore told Breitbart News roughly one hour before the polls closed, comparing his state GOP primary to the Democrats’ caucus in Nevada on Saturday. “It’s an amazing thing…and [a] good sign for GOP in [the] fall.”
Breitbart News also learned absentee ballots more than doubled from 2012. “The absentee numbers are shocking – and broke our expectations by a mile,” Moore added, saying the absentee ballots reached roughly 59,000 this year versus about 27,000 in 2012.
“Voting has been smooth and steady all day,” he added. “Many precincts broke 2012 turnout numbers by 2 pm.”
WSPA-TV reported that there was a 40-percent voter turnout in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which is more than double previous years.
“Spartanburg and Greenville always come in late and always come in hugely evangelical. It’s where the center of the evangelical vote in this state,” Hogan Gidley, who was the former executive director for the South Carolina Republican Party and former communications advisor for Gov. Mike Huckabee, told Breitbart News. “I think Cruz and Trump will benefit the most from that because they are the ones leading with the evangelicals.”
“Each pocket of evangelical Christians have different desires and beliefs,” Gidley explained, but added, “evangelicals appear to be breaking for Trump right now.”