By admin 
U.S. Sen. Darline Graham decisively won the Republican nomination to replace her late brother on the November U.S. Senate ballot with the help of voters in the Grand Strand.
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Graham won the Republican nomination in South Carolina by 4.9 percentage points and about 18,000 votes Tuesday evening. The election was declared around 9 p.m. Tuesday evening in her favor by the Associated Press, two hours after the polls closed.
She beat U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, who represents the 5th Congressional District. Norman, who also lost the GOP governor primary earlier this summer, found support in Upstate counties but not enough to win the nomination.
By the end of the night, Graham had more than 193,000 votes to Norman’s 175,000. She’ll face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews in November.
Here are four other numbers that matter from South Carolina’s runoff Tuesday evening.
Horry County delivered for Graham
Graham dominated Horry County and other counties in the Grand Strand, success some political watchers said led to her win Tuesday.
“Just by doing as well as she did there [Myrtle Beach region], she just really put the pressure on Norman to really then overperform in the Upstate, and he didn’t,” said Steve Kornacki, the chief data analyst at NBC News and host of the station’s “Kornacki Cam” livestream.
Graham won Horry County by nearly 17,000 votes and 47 percentage points Tuesday. It’s a region where U.S. Rep. Russell Fry led in the primary, even though he finished third statewide. Fry, who represents the Pee Dee and Grand Strand, backed Graham following the primary.
Nearly 3,500 more people voted in Tuesday’s election in Horry County than the primary Aug. 11.
President Donald Trump also campaigned for Graham in Myrtle Beach days before the election, bringing thousands to a rally for his chosen candidate.
Scott Huffmon, a political science professor at Winthrop University, said Graham needed to perform well in Horry County and other places she initially found support across the state to win the Republican nomination.
“If she doesn’t increase and keep her wins across the rest of the state, Horry is not going to save her,” Huffmon said. “If she keeps her wins across the rest of the state but loses Horry, or Horry doesn’t turn out, she loses. So she needs both, and she got both.”
Voter turnout increased from primary
About 369,000 voted in the Republican runoff, and more than 335,500 votes in the initial primary. That means voter turnout increased by about 10%, a rare occurrence in South Carolina primary runoffs.
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Earlier this summer, voting in the Republican governor primary dropped by more than 154,000 votes, from nearly 473,000 to nearly 319,000.
More people also voted early in the Tuesday runoff than the special primary. More than 63,700 voted early ahead of the runoff last week, up from the nearly 62,000 who voted early in the primary.
Huffmon said the increased attention on the runoff, brought in part by Trump’s in-person campaigning, may have helped turnout.
The initial primary happened one month after Lindsey Graham died and less than two weeks following his South Carolina funeral. Voters had an extra two weeks to learn about the election and candidates ahead of the runoff.
“The lead up to the special primary was kind of out of nowhere,” Huffmon said. “Not a lot of people had prepared for it. There was a lot less information.”
Upstate backed Norman
While Graham won the runoff, Norman still found more support in the Upstate. Norman is a member of the hard-right U.S. House Freedom Caucus and the Upstate typically is home to more conservative voters.
Norman won 12 counties statewide in the runoff Tuesday, up from 10 in the Aug. 11 primary.
His wins were concentrated in the Upstate and northern Midlands, including Newberry, Chester and his home county of York. Norman’s winning territory was located in several metro areas where he was able to rack up sizable amounts of votes against Graham.
Norman won Greenville County by more than 17,000 votes and Spartanburg County by more than 8,000. It wasn’t enough to beat back Graham’s lead in the rest of the state, and Kornacki said she “held her own” in those Upstate counties.
“When Graham started putting up those huge numbers, like down in the Pee Dee, that means Norman needs to go over his benchmark somewhere else,” Kornacki said. “And the place to look for that, I think, would have been Greenville, Spartanburg, and in neither one of those places did that happen.”
Graham won home county, but Norman picked up support
Graham finished first in Lexington County, where she lives, by about 20 percentage points. Her success followed a snub from the Lexington County Republican Party, who endorsed Norman over Graham before the runoff.
But Norman actually picked up a greater percentage of votes than Graham between the primary and runoff, though the appointed senator won by more than 4,600 votes on Tuesday.
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