Since 1992, South Carolina primary voters have picked the winning candidate when Democrats won the White House. Who’s likely to do well there in 2028?
How progressives can actually win South Carolina
SC Democratic Chair Christale Spain says Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker are creating early buzz by showing up and connecting with voters.
Since 1992, anytime a Democrat has won the White House, South Carolina primary voters have picked the winning candidate. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were the top vote-getters in the state on their roads to the presidency.
As Democrats seek a path back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in 2028, South Carolina will again be the first state in the nation to hold a Democratic presidential primary – or at least the state sanctioned by party leaders to vote first. The Democratic National Committee officially confirmed Aug. 15 that South Carolina is the party’s choice to replace Iowa and New Hampshire, the traditional leadoff states, in two years to better reflect the party’s diverse voters.
Many potential presidential candidates are already making pilgrimages to the state, even though the primary won’t happen until Jan. 22, 2028.
That includes multiple trips by California Gov. Gavin Newsom for the South Carolina Democratic Party’s “On the Road” series, an initiative designed to connect national and regional Democratic figures to local communities.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly participated in a SCDP town hall event in 2025. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was an SCDP speaker earlier in 2026. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats’ unsuccessful 2024 candidate, participated in a private fundraiser this year. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, the latter a 2020 presidential candidate, took part in this year’s “On the Road” series.
“Everybody comes here to test the water,” said Brent Nelsen, a political science professor at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. “Because we have a significant African American population, it is a great place for Democratic candidates to test their message with one of the main foundational blocks of the Democratic coalition.”
More than 60% of South Carolina’s Democratic primary electorate is African American, which is the party’s most reliable voting bloc. Matters of faith and affordability are the most important issues for voters, and a moderate candidate is likely to do best here, say the state’s Democratic leaders and political experts.
South Carolina is in the Bible belt
South Carolina voters tend to be conservative and deeply religious, and candidates who can speak to their religious or spiritual beliefs would do well, said Christale Spain, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.
“It is a part of how you have to campaign in the Deep South,” said Spain. “It’s the Bible belt.”
Spain said while faith communities are part of the political landscape, dominated mostly by Baptists and Methodists, it doesn’t mean that people from other denominations or religions would be at a disadvantage.
“I mean, Joe Biden was a Catholic,” she said.
Political commentator Bakari Sellers, a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, agreed.
“Rooted in faith is important. It’s not a religiosity, although, you know, Black Christianity is extremely strong, but it’s having some center of faith,” he said. “At the end of the day, we want somebody who understands the power of prayer.”
He pointed to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, and Moore, who is a Southern Baptist.
“Both come in with the ability to understand the power of faith, the power of prayer, and they can do well,” he said.
Candidates willing to ‘do the work’ and increase voter turnout
Rep. Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s only Democratic congressman, is seen as a kingmaker in the state party, and in an Aug. 3 interview with Roland Martin, he said Black voters should not be taken for granted.
“The fact of the matter is you want to win in November. So you ought to put people on the field who demonstrate that they can appeal to all those corners that make up this party,” said Clyburn, an influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “The African American vote is very important to the Democratic Party.”
Successful candidates will be able to inspire turnout, Clyburn said, noting that only about 59% of eligible Black voters cast ballots in 2024.
South Carolina Democrats will gravitate to candidates who are willing to do the work of connecting with voters and helping Democratic candidates win in the state, Spain said.
“The candidate that wants to help South Carolina Democrats break the Republican supermajority of the State House. The candidate that wants to help Dr. Anna Andrews become the next junior senator from South Carolina. The candidate that wants to help elect the next Democratic governor in South Carolina,” Spain said. “That’s who does well in South Carolina.”
The state’s voters also want candidates who can connect with them on issues of affordability.
“Someone who can speak to the pain that everybody feels across the country,” said Spain. “The cost of gas, the cost of groceries, access to affordable health care, education – all those things matter to South Carolinians just like they matter to Democratic voters across the country.”
Among candidates with buzz, she said, are Newsom and Booker.
“I don’t know that there’s one name that rises above the others, but you have people like Governor Newsom, because he made national headlines for all the work he’s done to push back against the unconstitutional redistricting,” she said.
Booker has “great relationships” from the time he ran for president in 2020 and had a big team on the ground, she said.
Progressives vs. moderates
While the Democratic Party is facing an ongoing ideological tug-of-war between the moderate establishment and its progressive wing nationwide, moderates still have an edge in the conservative state, say the state’s party leadership and political experts.
The decision to put South Carolina first is one of the smartest strategic moves the DNC has made in a long time, said Melissa DeRosa, a national Democratic strategist.
“It will reward the candidate who can assemble the core Democratic coalition – not simply excite the loudest, most homogeneous fringe faction of the party,” she said.
Did she have a guess on who might do well?
“We’ll see on the ‘who,’ but it unquestionably favors candidates who start early, have money and organization, build real relationships in South Carolina, can win over Jim Clyburn,” DeRosa said. “And understand that social media buzz is no substitute for working-class support.”
Sellers doesn’t think far-left progressive candidates such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York will do well among the traditional Democratic base voters in the state.
“South Carolina is going to cull the herd extremely early,” he said. “This isn’t where a far-left movement is going to come through and sweep the state … where someone like AOC will be able to bring far left-ideologies into the environment and be persuasive or victorious.”
Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t said whether she will run in 2028. Another progressive thought to be considering running is Rep. Ro Khanna of California. He served as the SCDP state convention keynote speaker this year.
Gibbs Knotts, professor of political science at Coastal Carolina University and author of the 2020 book “First in the South: Why South Carolina’s Presidential Primary Matters,” said the state has often played the role of tiebreaker when Iowa and New Hampshire, traditionally the first two states to hold primaries, picked different candidates.
This time, it is slated to play a different role than it’s had before, he said, and the person who emerges on top in South Carolina is likely to be a moderate Democrat, as the state’s voters tend to be a “little more conservative on the ideological spectrum.”
“Most progressive candidates, I think, will struggle some in South Carolina, given the Democratic electorate and the political culture in the state,” he said.
Sellers cast the progressive movement in the country as a “suburban, white, upper crust type of movement.”
“That doesn’t mesh with what we have here in South Carolina,” he said.
Sellers’ top picks for who might do well? Moore, Beshear and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, in no particular order. They are all viewed as mainstream, pragmatic Democrats, he said.
He classified Newsom as a “somewhat unknown quantity.”
“He has name ID coming into the state, but again, the ‘I am the smartest person and the most handsome person in the room, all you have to do is ask me’ type of candidacy doesn’t necessarily play well here,” said Sellers. “So, we’ll see how that works for him as well.”
‘Hunger for something different’
While the state is traditional and not prone to radicalism, Nelsen said there’s an appetite for change.
“I hear it on the streets that there’s this hunger for something different, something exciting, something that you can really get excited about,” he said. “So perhaps an AOC or somebody else emerges.”
Still, he said he’d be surprised if a Democratic Socialists of America candidate won in South Carolina, adding that he doesn’t see Clyburn backing such a candidate.
“But I would not be surprised that a DSA candidate had a very strong showing that might then propel that person to stronger showings in subsequent primaries,” he said.
Once the November midterm elections are over, it is going to be interesting to see how the two big factions in the Democratic Party play in South Carolina, Nelsen said.
Spain was optimistic about progressives’ chances.
“I think they’ll play well in South Carolina,” said Spain, who worked on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
However, she said, progressive candidates who have gone to Iowa and New Hampshire for decades would have to make the same level of investment in South Carolina and be “unafraid to speak to issues that matter to the Black community and help uplift those issues as well.”
Candidates’ efforts to focus on South Carolina could be complicated by threats from Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats to hold their 2028 nominating contests first, regardless of the national party’s decision on a calendar.
Early presidential polls suggest Harris has a head start on the Democratic field, but it’s not a given that she’ll do well in South Carolina, Knotts said.
“I mean, she is from California. And so the ability to sort of connect with Southern voters would be something that you’d want to look at,” Knotts said.
The Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of why the party lost the 2024 election, released this year, cited Harris’ inability to energize voters as one of the reasons.
“Losing a whopping 6.8 million voters who supported Biden in 2020 proved pivotal in this extremely close election,” the autopsy report said. “Harris’s inability to mobilize these pro-Biden voters may have been the campaign’s biggest failure.”
While Sellers and Spain said Harris has a good chance in the 2028 primary, Nelsen wasn’t optimistic.
“I think there’s very little enthusiasm for her. I’m on a college campus, and no one has emerged as a clear favorite for anybody,” said Nelsen. “People kind of screw up their faces when Newsom is mentioned. I think it’s a wide-open field.”
His top three picks? Shapiro, Moore and Newsom.
Knotts also cited Moore as having the potential to do well.
With 524 days until the South Carolina Democratic primary, “potential” is the operative word.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal.