From The Cook Political Report:
That calculus would certainly make it easier for Harrison to pull off the upset, and Joe Biden is expected to do far better than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, when she got just 41% in the state). Still, it is hard for a statewide Democrat in a federal race to get to 50 percent in a state like South Carolina, where 47 or even 48 percent has been the highest ceiling. But with a Constitution Party candidate, Bill Bledsoe, on the ballot, Democrats hope that some of those more conservative voters will cast a protest vote against Graham by ticking that box. However, last week Bledsoe — who didn’t have a website or active social media accounts — announced he was endorsing Graham, citing his work on judicial nominations. Graham’s campaign blasted out a statement. Nonetheless, Bledsoe will remain on the ballot. Republicans still remain hopeful his endorsement could neutralize that threat of peeling away votes (Bledsoe also ran in 2016 against Scott and got 2 percent of the vote), while Democrats think that the antipathy for Graham even among traditional Republican voters won’t evaporate and that he could still get 4 or even perhaps 5 points on the ballot, which could be determinative.
While South Carolina is certainly redder than its border states Georgia and North Carolina — two other Sun Belt states that have seen more rapid demographic and urban/suburban shifts than South Carolina — that doesn’t mean there aren’t underlying shifts here as well. As we detailed when we first moved this race from Solid to Likely Republican back in April, there are shifting areas here too, and not just in the changing Charleston-based 1st District (where surprise freshman Rep. Joe Cunningham is now in a Lean Democrat race) but also even in the typically reliably conservative Upstate core of Greenville/Spartanburg and along the Charlotte exurbs in York County along the border, and even in the Columbia suburbs too. Harrison’s hefty war chest has enabled him to spend heavily in those areas, with the most spent in the Upstate where Harrison does have a shot at flipping college-educated voters, especially college-educated suburban white women — exactly the type of voter his ads have been smartly designed to persuade. And he’s been able to buy considerable time in the Charlotte media market as well, which is already overrun and pricy due to the trio of competitive North Carolina races there at the presidential, gubernatorial and Senate level. Plus, Harrison appears to be hitting the targets right now he needs to excite and turn out the state's Black voters.
Ultimately, this race has earned a more competitive rating — underscoring just how fast the GOP majority is slipping away if they have to defend turf like this, and also how much Trump’s numbers have fallen across the board. We are moving South Carolina from Lean Republican to Toss Up.
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Jaime Harrison
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Adair Ford Boroughs