GOP ground game, Supreme Court shift: How SC’s Graham had another US Senate victory
South Carolina Democrats had high hopes for Jaime Harrison’s candidacy. During his long-shot bid he shattered national fundraising records with the help of close poll numbers showing he had a chance to upset a three-term, high-profile incumbent.
But on Tuesday, Democrats’ hopes were dashed when S.C. voters decisively gave Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham a fourth term in the upper chamber.
Despite facing the toughest challenge of his career, many factors worked in Graham’s favor as he defeated Harrison by 10 points, in a race where Graham raised $108 million and Harrison raised more than $130 million.
An early Republican ground game, the fight over the Supreme Court, and conservative voters coalescing behind Graham all helped the current Senate Judiciary Committee chairman win reelection, earning 1.36 million votes to Harrison’s 1.1 million votes.
Here’s a look at how those factors played out, according to political observers, including the leaders of the state Republican and Democratic parties, and an analysis of turnout:
The ground game
Republicans exploited what they identified as a critical weakness in Harrison’s efforts to reach voters, after seeing the candidate take his campaign online and on TV almost exclusively, a precaution he and other Democratic candidates took, while pushing the importance of social distancing and limiting person-to-person contact to avoid spreading COVID-19.
Republicans had an active ground game leading up to the election to turn out its voters, the state GOP chairman says. Meanwhile, because of COVID-19, the Democratic Party in the state was more cautious at doing in-person campaigning.
Republicans went door to door, the most effective, but most time consuming form of campaigning, political consultants and observers say.
The S.C. GOP had about 300 full-time staff members who made 600,000 door knocks around the state, said S.C. GOP Chairman Drew McKissick.
“This is the first cycle in the history of my experience where we’ve had a ground game, and they didn’t, much less us having a spectacular ground game,” McKissick said. “So they’re not having a ground game is critical. When we saw that, we doubled down on what we were already doing because we thought it was going to be a huge advantage.”
And meeting voters in person was more effective than the flood of advertising the state saw in this election, McKissick said.
“The more difficult and involved the contact is, the higher the payoff,” McKissick said, saying that “showing up at somebody’s door ... pays more dividends.”
“Number one, if they get a knock, they’re more likely to vote. Two: They’re more likely to vote for the person who knocked. Period. In every election, all statistics bear that out.”
Because of COVID-19 concerns, McKissick said staff were trained to knock on doors and step away from the door to ensure social distancing, all while wearing masks. When the potential voter answers the door, the GOP staff would hand off literature, chat with the voter or even conduct a survey.
In a news conference on Wednesday, S.C. Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson acknowledged the lack of a ground game to reach out to voters.
“We had to worry about COVID-19. Our responsibility morally was to make sure ... that we didn’t get our staffers sick, and that we didn’t get our volunteers sick, and that we didn’t get the voters that we were coming in contact with. I think that that is clear across the country. The Republicans have one perception and one view of coronavirus and the Democrats clearly have another.”
Robertson said SCDP had one staff member test positive for COVID-19, which shaped the party’s approach to the campaign.
The SCDP ended up ramping up its ground game in the last month, something it wishes it did earlier.
“There’s no question that we wanted to do something, we were forced by COVID-19 to do another, but I’m not sitting here blaming a virus, for yesterday (Election Day), at the end of the day the fault lies with me,” Robertson said.
The SCDP relied heavily on calling voters as part of its outreach and “made so many phone calls that we ran out of numbers,” Robertson said. After phone calls came virtual events, direct mail and TV ads, he said.
Eventually Democrats started walking through neighborhoods for no-contact canvassing, distributing fliers on doors or in newspaper boxes. Democratic canvassers spoke to people if they were outside their houses.
The state Democratic Party received a $15 million investment from Harrison to hire county organizers, hire staff for digital organizing programs, and reach out to voters via phone calls, text messages and contactless canvassing.
The Harrison campaign disputes it nationalized the race in the reliably Republican state, pointing to the “Harrison Helps” initiative of doing community service projects around the state. It also had previous Graham supporters speak on behalf of Harrison.
With the millions Harrison brought in, his campaign invested heavily on television, radio and digital advertising. It was almost impossible to turn on a television or watch a video online without seeing an advertisement about the Senate race.
Most of the money Graham and Harrison raised came from outside of South Carolina, and California was tops for both candidates, according to their financial reports detailing July 1 through Oct. 14 fundraising and spending, the last ones made publicly available before the election.
But close poll numbers led to spending by outside groups including the Democratic and Republican super PACs running ads in the state.
McKissick, the state GOP chairman, said the millions of dollars to run ads had “diminishing returns” for Harrison and put the Democrat “between a rock and a hard place.”
Had Harrison taken issues that “cut in his favor ... if he were to start taking issue positions that would help him gain ground in South Carolina ... people in California wouldn’t be sending any money.”
Conservatives coalesced around Graham
In the closing weeks of the campaign, Harrison’s campaign promoted Constitution Party nominee Bill Bledsoe to siphon conservative votes off of Graham. Bledsoe polled at 5% according to an internal poll in September released by the Harrison campaign.
However, the strategy did not work.
Even though Bledsoe’s name was on the ballot, he dropped out of the race in early October and announced support for Graham. Because of the ads run by the Harrison campaign, Upstate Tea Party and conservative groups came out and publicly backed Graham to consolidate conservative voters around the senator.
Bledsoe ultimately received 1.3% of the vote.
“I think (the Harrison strategy) backfired severely. I think it was an insult to conservatives around state in terms of our intelligence, as if we couldn’t figure out what was going on,” McKissick said. “And you know again you got the guy himself but sort of out there endorsing Sen. Graham.”
Many polls also showed Graham polling lower than President Donald Trump in the state, a sign Graham would need the president’s coattails to win re-election. Some Republican voters in the state also had expressed hesitancy over voting for Graham because of his previous moderate stances.
While on the trail, Graham had confidence he and the president would perform about the same when the votes were tallied. He was right.
With 100% of precincts reporting, the two were less than a percentage point apart, with Trump receiving 55.05% of the vote in the presidential race in South Carolina. Graham received 54.41% of the vote in his race.
And there wasn’t a drop off from the number of people who voted in the presidential race to the Senate election. In fact, about 1,800 more people voted in the Senate race than the presidential race.
“I think people saw that the stakes could not be higher in the Senate race, and I think the Senate race may have supplanted the president’s race on everyone’s radar in South Carolina as the most important race on the ballot,” said Rob Godfrey, a former Gov. Nikki Haley advisor.
“That’s certainly an uncommon thing in a presidential year, but it’s not surprising in a place like South Carolina where people know their senators, where they know their senators personally, and they tend to send their senators back to Washington term after term.”
The Supreme Court factor
Polling in the race showed Graham and Harrison were neck-and-neck in August and September. But then Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, handing Senate Republicans an opportunity to move forward with confirming a conservative appointment to the bench in the month before the presidential election.
Over Democratic objections, Republicans rushed confirmation of now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett, touting the victory back home where installing conservative federal judges is a rallying cry for conservative voters.
Independent public polling showed it was the right strategy for Graham. After Ginsburg’s death, 54% of South Carolinians wanted the seat filled before the election. And as Barrett’s confirmation hearings took place, Graham, who currently serves as the Senate Judiciary committee chairman, took a six-point lead in multiple polls.
“The last two weeks things broke pretty strongly for us,” Graham said during a Zoom call with reporters Friday. “Judge Barrett being confirmed was a key moment. I think the way I handled the hearing was seen by Republicans and most people to be competent and capable.”
McKissick, the SCGOP chairman, said Graham had been up six to eight points in internal polls going into Election Day, and the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice in the month before Election Day helped Graham’s cause.
“It’s an issue just like in the 2018 year we saw in several Senate races around the country. While the Republicans were losing the House of Representatives, we actually picked up seats in the US Senate,” McKissick said.
The 2018 Senate wins were driven by the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, he said, adding that conservatives “place a premium on the Judiciary. They’ve been fighting for years, and it drives home the importance of the election to them.”
Even the Democratic Party chairman thinks the Supreme Court helped Graham tremendously.
“I think the fact that really consolidated his support was his handling on the Supreme Court nomination,” Robertson said. “The Supreme Court nomination was really the solidification and you started to see the solidification of his support. ... He didn’t act as crazy as he did during the Kavanaugh hearings.”
Keys to Graham’s turnout win
Both Harrison and Graham had geographic areas where they needed to do well or even run up the score. Upstate areas as well as Horry County supported Graham, while more urban areas backed Harrison.
Election forecasters said Harrison would need do well in Charleston County by getting 60% of the vote. Harrison won the county, but only with 55% of the vote. Graham previously won the county in 2014 with 49% of the vote.
Even though Harrison received more raw votes than President Barack Obama when he ran in 2008 and 2012, the percentage of the vote Harrison received is about where Democrats running statewide have a ceiling in South Carolina, based on recent statewide elections.
Harrison received 44.04% in Tuesday’s election. Obama won 44.9% of the S.C. vote in 2008 and 44.09% in 2012. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received 41% in 2016.
Harrison had some bright spots. Even though President Donald Trump flipped Clarendon and Dillon counties that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, with close margins, Harrison also won those counties as well, with close margins.
But Harrison didn’t have enough rural support.
One key bellwether county to show how well the rural Black vote performed was Darlington County, a county where 41% of the residents are Black, higher than the state’s Black population of 27%. A win there would have shown Harrison was turning out the rural Black vote. Graham won the county this year, if barely. Obama carried the county in 2012.
Graham, as expected did well in the Upstate and had good margins to counteract Harrison’s gains in other areas.
Graham received 58% of the vote in Greenville County, and almost 62% of the vote in Spartanburg. In York County, Graham received 56% of the vote. Harrison needed to cut into those advantages to win. And forecasters estimated that Harrison would need 70% of the vote in Richland County to pull of the upset. He fell just short, picking up almost 69%.
It’s tough to say whether higher turnout overall would have changed Tuesday’s outcome.
Turnout in the state was under 72%, and Harrison lost by 10 points. In 2008, when Barack Obama lost the state by 9 percentage points, overall turnout was at 76%.
South Carolina allowed anyone to vote early by mail or in person because of the pandemic. And a record amount of people took advantage of what became an election month. Harrison won that non-election day vote, leading among those who voted early and by mail. Roughly 720,000 absentee voters cast ballots for Harrison, while Graham had about 593,000 absentee votes.
But most Republican voters waited until Election Day. Nearly twice as many voters cast ballots for Graham than for Harrison on Tuesday.
Reporter Zak Koeske contributed to this article.
This story was originally published November 8, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "GOP ground game, Supreme Court shift: How SC’s Graham had another US Senate victory."
