Replies

“16 candidates. That’s criminal abuse of a system to permit a shyster to come to the front.

We really need a run-off system in our primaries between the 2 top vote getters unless the high has over 50%.”

Yeah, South Carolina really should adopt a run-off if no one gets 50%+1 in the primary.

Oh, wait, SC has had such a system for years, and, in fact, Sanford finished first in the first round, and won the run-off yesterday by like 15%. So you can check that one off your to-do list for the SC legislature.

For the record, I agree with you that every state should have run-offs if no one gets 50%+1 (or maybe 40%+1, which is how NC does it) in the primary. Such a system will ensure that the candidate supported by a majority of the district’s Republicans gets the Republican nomination. In the case of the SC-01 in 2013, that happened to be Mark Sanford, but maybe it will be Paul Thurmond in 2014.

Although you are correct about the runoff, it bears noticing that in the runoff, it appears that far fewer voted than in the special, and that Sanford himself received far fewer votes than he did previously.

This sounds like serious dissatisfaction, and maybe even a huge voter discouragement campaign, if someone were to ask me.

So, in reality, it can be argued that Sanford did NOT get anywhere 60% of the vote, given that in the previous election 19,000 was only 36% of the vote. That suggests that 11,000 is closer to 30% of the vote.

Can you spell trouble in River City...?

I would also say that someone very carefully split that special election vote into a fragmented mess. Intentional? My vote would be "yes".

2013 Republican Primary Runoff - South Carolina's 1st Congressional District Special Election^[28]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Republican	Mark Sanford	11,387	60.76	N/A
	Republican	Curtis Bostic	7,355	39.24	N/A

2013 Republican Primary - South Carolina's 1st Congressional District Special Election^[27]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Republican	Mark Sanford	19,854	36.91%	N/A
	Republican	Curtis Bostic	7,168	13.33%	N/A
	Republican	Larry Grooms	6,673	12.40%	N/A
	Republican	Teddy Turner	4,252	7.90%	N/A
	Republican	Andy Patrick	3,783	7.03%	N/A
	Republican	John Kuhn	3,479	6.47%	N/A
	Republican	Chip Limehouse	3,279	6.10%	N/A
	Republican	Ray Nash	2,508	4.66%	N/A
	Republican	Peter McCoy	867	1.61%	N/A
	Republican	Elizabeth Moffly	530	0.99%	N/A
	Republican	Tim Larkin	393	0.73%	N/A
	Republican	Jonathan Hoffman	360	0.67%	N/A
	Republican	Jeff King	211	0.39%	N/A
	Republican	Keith Blandford	195	0.36%	N/A
	Republican	Shawn Pinkston	154	0.29%	N/A
	Republican	Ric Bryant	87	0.16%	N/A