Darline Graham, in a Senate debate, on her own qualifications: “not that informed on national security.”
Annie Andrews, a Democratic pediatrician, won South Carolina’s Senate seat on Tuesday night, beating the Trump-endorsed Republican Sen. Darline Graham in a state Trump carried by nearly 18 points two years ago. NBC News projected the win and CBS News projected it too, and with an estimated 86 percent of the vote counted Andrews led 51 percent to 46.8, a margin of 75,351 votes. Do the subtraction the call stories from NBC and CBS leave out: Trump won here by about 18, Andrews is ahead by about four, and that is a swing of roughly 22 points, double the 11-point swing Nate Silver said this cycle was looking like.
Two caveats sit next to those numbers. The AP count carried on WMBF’s live results page showed the race uncalled when we checked, so the call rests on NBC, CBS and Decision Desk HQ, and the figures are unofficial with the rest of the vote still to come. The swing moves when they do.
Here is the arithmetic, because a margin on a partial count is only worth printing if the work shows. Andrews’s 51 minus Graham’s 46.8 is 4.2. Add Trump’s 2024 margin of nearly 18 and the swing is about 22. Silver’s rule of thumb, from the interview we wrote up last week, is that the president’s party loses about 7.5 points of margin at the average midterm and about 11 in this one, and that candidate quality moves a race by five points at most.
Give the full five to Graham’s weaknesses, add the 11, and you have 16 of the 22. About six points are left over. That is a back-of-envelope on a partial count, not a model, and the remainder could shrink as the rest of the vote comes in.
We think it is the part that matters. A weak nominee, a good year for Democrats and a challenger who outraised the incumbent still do not add up to a state moving twice as far as the country, which leaves a verdict on the president who endorsed her and campaigned for her, and a count at 86 percent cannot prove that.
The money did not fail to show up. It failed to matter. The Senate Leadership Fund, the main Republican Senate super PAC, spent $13 million supporting Graham, and CBS counts $827,000 from MAGA Inc. in August. In the final pre-election filing period, Andrews raised more than $4 million and Graham about $90,000. In North Carolina, Republican money left before the voters did. In South Carolina it stayed, and lost anyway.
Graham, 62, was commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind when Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her in July, after her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, died suddenly. She won the Republican nomination in a special primary. Then came the contradiction: as Trump was scheduled to campaign for her, she broke with him over his plan to waive Russia sanctions and said, “Because I don’t trust Putin, and I don’t trust Russia.” Voters got an appointed senator who took the rally and disowned the policy.
Was it an upset? NBC and CBS both use the word, and the ratings agree: Cook Political Report moved the race only from solid to likely Republican in September. The polls had caught up by the end. A New York Times/Siena poll released October 28 had Andrews and Graham tied at 48, with 51 percent of voters saying Graham lacked the experience to be an effective senator. The vote beat the tie by about four. South Carolina was not one of the seven states in the final Times/Siena Senate release we wrote up Sunday, the races that poll treated as likeliest to decide the majority.
Andrews will be the first Democrat to win a Senate race in South Carolina since 1998. Democrats hold 47 seats and need 51, because Vice President JD Vance breaks a 50-50 tie. Reuters counts Andrews and Roy Cooper as two of the four seats Democrats need, and that assumes every seat they already hold stays theirs.
Ohio is the place to hold the number up against the count. Trump carried it by 11 in 2024, and Silver’s 11-point swing makes it a tossup. South Carolina’s 22 would make it a Democratic win by 11. We are not predicting that. We are saying that when Ohio reports, the distance between its result and South Carolina’s tells you whether tonight is one strange state or the first line of a pattern.