RELEASE: SCGOP – Historic Straight Ticket Republican Support


(11/9/18 – Columbia, SC) The South Carolina Republican Party released the following regarding the record high levels of straight-ticket voting in the November 6th mid-term elections.

The most up to date data released by the South Carolina Election Commission on the mid-term election shows over 1.7 million votes cast, with over 1.08 million voting straight ticket, (63%); over 576,000 voting straight Republican (53%) and 489,000 voting Democrat (45%), giving the GOP an 8% advantage statewide. This contrasts with approximately 50% of voters choosing a straight ticket in 2016, with Republicans garnering over 529,949 and Democrats getting 499,015 (46.6%) for a 3% GOP advantage.

Further, GOP straight ticket in 2018 not only nearly doubled the 2014 mid-term cycle tally of 295,416, but actually outpaced the 2016 presidential election results by 46,699.

South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick stated: “This shows the growing strength of the Republican brand in South Carolina. Our Party has continued to grow and be successful at the ballot box due to our conservative principles and the hard work done by our candidates and our volunteers.”

“The fact that more people would vote straight ticket in a mid-term election versus a presidential election is unheard of. That it was up 13% is absolutely incredible. The fact that almost fifty-thousand more South Carolinians voted straight Republican in a mid-term election than in a presidential election year is a testimony to the hard work of our Party and our candidates.”

“This should put to rest any notion that President Trump isn’t expanding the Republican base in our state and has increased overall Republican support. Our Party is growing, and these numbers confirm it.”

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HOW WE DID IT:

Our Victory team operated seven full time regional offices throughout the state, (in addition to our county GOP offices), where they organized and engaged our party’s dedicated volunteers.

We focused on expanding the Republican electorate and identifying and turning out more “low propensity” Republicans, including those who turned out for the first time in 2016 in support of President Trump.

We continued to expand and improve our use of technology and social media. Our smartphone apps for calling and door-to-door canvassing made it easy for volunteers to save time by only contacting targeted voters, and more easily collect data. The continued investment in improving our voter data continues to pay big dividends.

We conducted unprecedented promotion of absentee voting via targeted mail applications and online promotion encouraging targeted voters to vote by mail-in absentee ballot or “in person” absentee, resulting in record setting absentee voting.

Over three months we were able to:

* Recruit over 5,000 volunteers
* Knock on over 50,000 doors
* Send over 400,000 pieces of direct mail
* Make over 1.4 million paid and volunteer phone calls
* Send over 80,000 targeted text messages
* Promote hundreds of state and local campaign events
* Make over 1.5 million impressions on Facebook

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Election information source: scvotes.org

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