Trump to return to South Carolina days ahead of election
Two visits in one week to a state that has been reliably red for decades tells you something about how the party reads this Senate race. Trump was in Clemson last week, now Rock Hill on Thursday, and both stops are built around boosting Darline Graham against Annie Andrews. That kind of schedule is not what you do for a seat you think is safe.
I'd want to know what the internal polling shows. South Carolina hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate in years, but if the RNC is burning presidential time and money here, someone is worried about the margin. Rock Hill sits in the northern part of the state, close to Charlotte, while Clemson is out west. Those are different pockets of voters, and the campaign is clearly trying to touch both.
For the Democrats, Andrews is running a long-shot race, but a competitive Senate seat in a red state would force Republicans to spend resources they'd rather use elsewhere. The real story might not be whether Graham wins, but how much national attention this race is pulling and what that says about the broader map. I'll be watching to see if the party sends more surrogates in the final days, since that would confirm the anxiety isn't just local.