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MANNING — If you want to understand how Donald Trump won the 2024 election, look at places like Clarendon County. Clarendon, population 31,000, was blue for most of the 20th century. Black residents accounted for just over half the population by 2000.
Most of the people who lived there were farmers, timbermen or textile mill workers. The two closest cities, Charleston and Columbia, were each an hour and a half away. This SC county was a nearly 50-50 Trump-Biden battleground split last time.
What will '24 bring? But as the mills closed and the farms bled their profits and the county's population waxed and waned, conservatives moved in and up. And gained ground. In 2020, Trump was the first Republican candidate to win Clarendon County since Richard Nixon in 1972.
Trump's margin of victory? 111 votes. Signs for Republican candidates cover the windows of the Clarendon County GOP offices on Brooks Street, Sept. 12, 2024.
Clarendon was the closest matchup in the state in 2020 and went for Trump on Nov. 5. 2024.
But on Nov. 5, Republicans won every race in Clarendon County. So did Trump, bigly, taking 55 percent of the vote to Kamala Harris' 43 percent.
Rural communities like Clarendon shored up Trump's reelection not only in South Carolina, but in battleground states across the country . Meanwhile, the projected blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan crumbled for Harris, whose campaign struggled to connect with Black men and Hispanic voters — groups that previously were dependable supporters of Democratic candidates. Yet again, Trump had strong support from working-class people.
The AP VoteCast survey showed he won 55 percent of voters without a college degree, up from 51 percent in 2020 against Biden. Trump's promises to restore the economy and "Make America Great Again" reverberated in rural communities. "He's deeply in love with America.
I really believe that, and I think it shows," said Clarendon County Republican Chairman Moye Graham. "He's one of us." In dramatic political comeback, Donald Trump elected 47th president of the United States Clarendon Republicans worked hard to keep their county red.
Volunteers phone banked from party headquarters downtown and in their living rooms at home. They knocked on doors with Republican state Rep. Fawn Pedalino.
And they worked with groups like South Carolina Young Republicans and Americans for Prosperity to reach people who might just vote Republican. Moye Graham, chairman of the Clarendon County Republican Party, works after hours in the party’s office in Manning, Sept. 12, 2024, in Clarendon County.
Graham credits Trump's win to the party's hard work and outreach. Their efforts paid off. Republicans won Tuesday at the ballot box.
Pedalino won a second term in the Statehouse. Longtime Democrat state Sen. Kevin Johnson lost his seat to Republican Jeff Zell.
Democratic U.S. Rep.
Jim Clyburn kept his seat, but Republican challenger Duke Buckner won Clarendon County. Probate Judge Margaret "Peggi" Jackson Sorrell, who ran as a Republican for the first time this year, won reelection. And on County Council, Republican Jay Johnson unseated incumbent Democrat Chairman Dwight Stewart.
Graham, who stayed up through the wee hours of the morning watching national election results, said he was fielding congratulatory calls and texts from Gov. Henry McMaster, Secretary of State Mark Hammond and S.C.
Speaker of the House Murrell Smith. "A lot of things are falling into place, and we've just got to keep it going," Graham said. Cindy Risher spends most of her free time on her patriotic decorated front porch at her home, pictured Sept.
12, 2024, in Clarendon County. Risher voted for Trump this year. Like other rural places, Clarendon's population shift — older, whiter and more Republican — is making it more hospitable Trump territory.
Older retirees are moving to lakefront property around Lake Marion in search of good weather and conservative politics, local officials said. And the conservative messaging reaches longtime rural Americans who are feeling excluded, said Scott Huffmon, a political science professor at Winthrop University. "The candidate who has best been able to tap into that bad attitude has been Donald Trump," Huffmon said.
"He's always been the one saying, 'They are ignoring you. They don't care about you. I will be your voice.
' And to disaffected rural Americans whose economy has been struggling even as the economy of many cities has been getting better, that message resonates with them." Democrats will need to figure out nationally why they're unable to connect with people who were once their core constituency, Huffmon added. US Rep.
Jim Clyburn beats Republican Duke Buckner with 57% of the vote Clarendon County Democratic Chair Patricia Pringle did not return The Post and Courier's call for comment. Black men were not as strong for the Democratic ticket this time around. And Harris failed to turn out enough White women on issues like abortion and inflation.
"Pocketbook issues kind of drove the economic thinking," Huffmon said, including in Clarendon County..
