South Carolina 2024 Republican Primary LIVE: Trump heads to South Carolina for primary night hoping to defeat Nikki Haley as exit polls show nearly half of the state's GOP voters identify as part of the MAGA movement

According to early exit polling data in South Carolina, over 4 in 10 GOP primary voters describe themselves as 'affiliated with the MAGA movement,' according to CNN.

In addition, 8 in 10 say they are conservatives and more than 4 in 10 identify as being 'very conservative.'

That's a good sign for Donald Trump as he hopes to trounce political rival Nikki Haley in her home state this evening.

An exit poll shows 65 percent of voters in South Carolina's Republican presidential primary contest do not think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election.

The poll by Edison Research gathered responses from 1,508 voters in the Republican contest.

It found 84 per cent said the condition of the U.S. economy is not good or poor.

Immigration was the most important issue according to 41 percent of those surveyed, while 31 percent said the economy mattered most.

Many voters in South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday want a United States that is less willing to openly challenge Russia, according to the Associated Press' VoteCast.

On the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and days after the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, AP VoteCast found a GOP electorate with lukewarm feelings toward NATO and skepticism about the value of confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

About 6 in 10 oppose continuing aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

About half of South Carolina’s voters want the United States to take a less active role in solving the world’s problems.

Only about a third described America’s participation in NATO as 'very good,' with more saying it’s only 'somewhat good.'

The Associated Press contributed to this post.

Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy began his speech at CPAC by praising the work of former President Donald Trump.

Ramaswamy told the crowd he has 'full confidence' that the former president will 'shut down the deep state' and 'finally drain the swamp.'

He also applauded the former president for his 'America first' approach as Washington politicians vote to send money abroad to Ukraine and elsewhere.

Javier Milei, the conservative president of Argentina, delivered a speech warning CPAC attendees about the dangers of socialism and its impact on economic markets.

After briefly meeting former President Donald Trump backstage, the South American president - and former economist - was greeted with loud applause.

'We've got socialists cornered,' he said to cheers.

'I will make Argentina great again,' he exclaimed. 'So the lesson is this: don't let socialism advance.'

He delivered his entire speech in Spanish.

The two leaders embraced in a hug backstage after Trump's remarks at CPAC and before Milei spoke.

'MAGA - make Argentina great again,' Trump could be heard saying.

Trump shared some of his inner monologue during a CPAC speech that meandered for an hour and 27 minutes.

He went far off script, and said critics would claim he rambled, then denied having cognitive difficulties.

‘And by the way, isn’t this better than reading off a fricking teleprompter,’ Trump said 58 minutes into his monologue.

He seemed attuned to what critics might say, in a speech where he ripped the ‘fake news’ and the crowd booed the press.

‘They’ll say: he rambled. Nobody can ramble like this,’ Trump said a few minutes before the full hour mark.

He referenced a ‘best speaker’ award, then accepted that he might not be taking home any trophies.

‘Probably I won’t get the best speaker this year because I went off this stupid teleprompter,’ he said, after long diversions about ISIS, why he likes to call the former president ‘Barack Hussein Obama,’ and other matters.

‘They’ll say he rambled. He’s cognitively impaired. No, it’s really the opposite. It’s total genius, you know that,’ Trump said, having called himself a ‘stable genius’ while in office.

An exit poll obtained by DailyMail.com reporters in Columbia, South Carolina, appears to have already decided who 'will' be on the ballot in November.

Question 3 lists out three choices for 'who will you vote for.'

Donald Trump (R), Robert F. Kennedy (I) and Joe Biden (D) are the only three options listed.

Donald Trump has proclaimed himself a ‘political dissident’ in his CPAC speech, amid worldwide condemnation of the death in prison of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

‘I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident,’ Trump said in a speech where he praised Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban.

‘I am a dissident,’ the former president said.

‘Remember this, I've been indicted more than Alphonse Capone,’ Trump said in a familiar refrain, referencing his four criminal indictments in a speech where he blasted prosecutors and judges.

His first comments on Navalny following his death in a Russian prison above the Arctic Circle came in a post last week where he compared his travails to Navalny’s.

'The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,' Trump wrote February 19.’ 'It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.’

Former President Donald Trump slammed President Joe Biden's performance early in his speech at CPAC, particularly his handling of the southern border.

'If crooked Joe Biden and his thugs win in 2024 the worst is yet to come,' Trump told the raucous crowd.

'Our country will sink to levels that are unimaginable.'

'With four more years of Biden the hordes of illegal aliens crossing our border will exceed 40-50 million people.’

'They're coming from Asia. They're coming in from the Middle East. They're coming from Africa,' he noted

.

Attendees at CPAC were on their feet cheering as former President Donald Trump took the stage to address the conservative conference a little after 2 p.m. EST.

The forty-fifth president came out clapping and hugged an American flag as the crowd of Republicans at the Gaylord National Resort stood celebrating his arrival.

His speech is the most highly anticipated of the four-day conference and comes the same day he is looking to beat Nikki Haley in her home state’s primary.

Thousands filled the seats in front of the main stage while Trimp made his entrance.

The standing-room-only area at the back of the room was similarly bursting at the start of his remarks.

Trump holds an impressive 30-point lead in the polls over Nikki Haley on average coming into the primary.

Haley, meanwhile, is in South Carolina hoping for what would need to be a historic win in the state she used to oversee as governor.

She cast her vote in the primary earlier today in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, with her children and mother.

Former President Donald Trump has all but won the Republican presidential nomination for 2024, but he has still not selected a running mate.

Conservative activists attending CPAC on Friday shared their thoughts and predictions about who Trump should be his running mate in November.

John Paul, 20, from Virginia said he preferred former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat who left the party.

'I think that she, especially her foreign policy views, can also be very beneficial with with Trump and this upcoming election and and being a former Democratic candidates,' he said, adding that he believed a Trump/Gabbard ticket would have a broad appeal to the electorate.

Other vice presidential hopefuls such as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Rep. Elise Stefanik have speeches at the conference scheduled for Friday.

Chatter about Trump's running mate was kicked off in earnest this week after the former president was asked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham Tuesday about a list of potential choices including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump confirmed they were all on his short list.

'Honestly all of those people are good. They’re all good, they’re all solid,' he said.

Devin, 20, from Virginia said he would like to see a unity ticket with former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.

'If she ends her campaign and then they're able to mend ties I think he might be able to bring back to the establishment vote,' he said, although he admitted it might be too late for Haley to mend fences with Trump as the contentious primary continued.

In the primary process candidates are fighting for delegates, which are apportioned on the basis of how many votes they get.

To win the Republican presidential nomination a candidate has to secure at least 1,215 of the 2,429 delegates that states send to the party convention in the summer.

So far, Donald Trump has secured 63 delegates and Nikki Haley has 17.

Ron DeSantis picked up nine before he dropped out and Vivek Ramaswamy won three before exiting the race.

In South Carolina today there are 50 delgates up for grabs and the winner of the popular vote gets all of them.

Republicans are trailing Democrats in raising money to fight the election.

By the end of last month President Joe Biden's campaign had built a war chest of $56 million compared to $30.5 million for Donald Trump.

The Democratic national Committee had $24 million while the Republican National Committee had only $8.7 million.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told the Washington Post: 'He (Trump) needs to raise money. Look what Democrats are raising.

'I told him, they are going to empty the coffers here. It’s one of the things that concerns me.'

Nikki Haley told Fox News hosts John Roberts and Sandra Smith that she is measuring today's primary in 'gratitude.'

The underdog in the 2024 GOP primary is polling on average 30 points behind favored candidate Donald Trump in her home state.

'I will tell you how I am measuring the day. Today was a day of complete gratitude,' she responded when asked how she plans to measure success tonight and during the upcoming Super Tuesday battle. 

'I had the opportunity to go to the voting booth with my mom. My mom was a lawyer in India, picked to be one of the first female judges to sit on the bench. But because of the times, it was too hard and she was never able to do that.'

'She was able to stand with me as she voted for her daughter for president of the United States. That's a pretty amazing example of how blessed we are to live in America.'

She says she feels a 'lot of gratitude' today toward the people of South Carolina after she cast her vote in her home state.

'It was a blessing to serve the state that raised me. A blessing to defend the country that I love so much, America. We have a country to save and we are not letting our foot off the gas.'

She pledged once again to stay in the race no matter the outcome tonight.

'We are getting through South Carolina. We are headed to Michigan tomorrow and Super Tuesday.'

Contrary to most polling, the majority of voters who spoke with DailyMail.com's Katelyn Caralle and Sarah Ewall-Wice in Columbia, South Carolina, say they are voting for Nikki Haley.

They spoke with many voters at the Ben Arnold Community Center today.

The majority said they cast their ballots for Nikki Haley in the South Carolina presidential primary.

Nikki Haley attempted to clear up her comments following a controversial ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that ruled embryos are children.

The 2024 hopeful said in an interview this week that frozen embryos are 'babies' setting off a wave of controversy.

'Embryos, to me, are babies,' Haley told NBC News.

She said Saturday that Democrats 'hope for another hot button issue' to pin Republicans on. 

But it is her 'personal' view that 'embryos are babies.'

'Just like I am pro-life. That doesn't mean everybody else has to think embryos are...What is important, I had to have fertility treatments to have both of my children. We are blessed when we can have options are available options to be available to parents as they are trying to have babies of their own.'

She also said that 'any decisions made with the embryos needs to be between the parents and the physician,' calling it a very sensitive subject.

'We don't need government getting involved,' she continued.

Donald Trump also came out 'strongly' in support of IVF yesterday.

He demanded Alabama 'act quickly' to preserve the availability of IVF after a contentious state supreme court ruling.

'I am calling on the Alabama Legislature to act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF,' he wrote on Truth Social Friday.

Nikki Haley tore into Donald Trump for claiming on Friday night that blasck voters can associate with him because he has posed for a mugshot and been indicted.

'It's digusting', Haley said as she arrived to vote in the wealthy gated community of Kiawah Island.

That’s the chaos that comes with Donald Trump. That’s the offensiveness. It’s going to happen everyday between now and the general election.'

Former President Donald Trump joined Fox News for an interview the morning of the South Carolina primary.

Host Lawrence Jones asked the former president about Biden not facing charges in his illegal documents case as Trump is facing prosecution.

‘Our country has never been this way,’ Trump responded. ‘It's never been so dangerous or so sick.’

‘It's the greatest scam in political history. It's a witch hunt. It's the greatest witch hunt, certainly, in political history.’

Trump is facing 40 felony charges in his classified documents case, and he could face over 20 years in prison if he is convicted.

Biden, meanwhile, will avoid being charged because he would come across to a jury ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,’ Special Counsel Robert Hur wrote in his investigation into the president.

Robert Schwartz and Tiffany James with PrimaryPivot are out at a polling place in Columbia, South Carolina today.

Schwartz said their effort is 'not about being pro-Nikki Haley, it’s about lowering Trump’s margins.'

'In the unlikely event she wins, our democracy survives,' they tell DailyMail.com's Katelyn Caralle.

They held signs saying 'Choose Democracy over Dictatorship.'

President Biden isn’t on the ballot today – he already crushed opponents in South Carolina’s Democratic primary February 3.

But he still found a way to make a headline that fits with his experience pitch as someone who knows how to maintain alliances. He took part in a video conference Saturday with fellow G7 leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss ‘our continued support for Ukraine and steps we can take together to continue holding Russia accountable,’ according to the White House.

It comes a day after Biden blasted Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson for sending lawmakers ‘on vacation’ rather than calling up a bill to provide $60 billion to aid Ukraine. European allies are making up for some of the gap left by stalled action in Congress while Ukrainian forces try to avoid further territorial losses.

Gov. Newsom says Nikki Haley staying in the GOP primary is helpful to Democrats.

'I think she’s one of our better surrogates, so I hope she stays in [the GOP primary race],' said Newsom on CNN.

He went on to say that her criticisms of Trump are 'spot on.'

'I’m enjoying this primary. And I hope it continues, so I wish her luck.'

NIkki Haley went after Donald Trump in a gaggle with reporters outside of a polling station on Saturday.

'If we believe that our policies lift up everyone, guess what you've got to talk to everyone. So when you go to my rallies and you go to my events you see everybody there, you see young, old, you see every race, every gender, you see Republicans, independents, and conservative Democrats, they all come in,' she stated.

The 2024 hopeful contrasted her approach with Trump's approach, saying she welcomes everyone into the GOP.

'I'm not going to push anybody away. Donald Trump said that anybody that supports me is barred permanently from MAGA. That's not how you win votes, that's not how you win Republicans, that's not how you win a general election and that's why Donald Trump will continue to lose.'

'It's because he pushes people out of our party and I'm trying to make a Republican party where we welcome everybody, because when we start uniting on those grounds, when we start coming together as Americans and stop allowing the exaggeration and peacocking of sound bites and stop the insults and stop the hating of each other, that's when America will be strong again.' 

She is positioning herself as a unity candidate, unlike Biden and Trump.

'Think of it of the two main candidates you're talking about, Joe Biden refers to anyone who doesn't support him as fascist. Donald Trump refers to anybody that doesn't support him as vermin. I call everybody who supports me or doesn't support me Americans. And that's where we have to get back to again.'

The Biden camapign tore into Donald Trump for having the 'audcacity' to soeak to black voters on Friday night and pretend he is the 'poster boy for modern racism'.

Jasmine Harris, the Black media director for the Biden campaign, called the former president 'an incompetent, anti-Black tyrant'.

'This is is the same man who falsely accused the Central Park 5, questioned George Floyd's mhumanity, compared his own impeachment to being lynched, and ensured the unemployment gap for Black wokers spiked during his presidency'.

Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake came out to a roaring crowd at CPAC as she began a speech praising former president Donald Trump.

'We want some Alpha man' Lake said during her remarks, 'we're tired of the beta man.'

'I like a strong man,' the current GOP Senate hopeful said before adding 'let me hear from the ladies out there!'

The crowd cheered enthusiastically.

Lake then listed her favorite accomplishments of Trump's including, but not limited to, a historic economy, secure border and energy independence.

'USA, USA, USA,' the conservative audience chimed in.

Nikki Haley was all smiles with her family as she cast her vote in the South Carolina Republican primary, where she is hoping to avoid a huge defeat at the hands of Donald Trump.

Haley pushed her mother Raj into the polling site in Kiawah Island, a wealthy gated community outside of Charleston.

Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankney told reporters Friday night that the candidate isn't done fighting even if she loses to Trump in her home state of South Carolina this evening.

'We know that the math is challenging, but this has never just been about who can win a Republican primary,' she said according to NPR.

'This battle is about who can win in November, defeat the Democrats and finally get our country back on track,' she continued.

Former President Donald Trump floated Friday night that black voters like him more now that he's posed for a mugshot and been criminally indicted 91 times.

Trump was headlining the Black Conservative Federation's Honors Gala in Columbia, South Carolina, on the eve of the state's Republican primary.

The ex-president and 2024 hopeful has been averaging about a 30-point lead over former U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, and received the endorsement of the state's black Sen. Tim Scott last month. 'When I did the mug shot in Atlanta, that mug shot is No. 1. You know who embraced it more than anyone else?' Trump asked the crowd. 'The black population.'

He complained that he got indicted for 'nothing' - claiming that's something black voters understand because they see 'what's happening to me happens to them.'

The main stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is full hours before President Donald Trump is expected to address the crowd while facing off with Nikki Haley in the South Carolina primary.

Thousands of conservatives are humming about the Gaylord National Resort in National Harbor, Maryland, waiting for addresses from former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and former President Donald Trump.

Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday morning to vent his fury at Fani Willis and demand the Georgia election case should be 'over'.

Cellphone data revealed Wade visited the exact area where the Fulton County district attorney was renting a condo at least 35 times before their admitted affair – at least one of them before she appointed him to prosecute former president Donald Trump in her election fraud case in Georgia.

Willis admitted in a special hearing last week that her ex-lover visited her at the apartment in Atlanta's Hapeville neighborhood, but appeared to shrug off the question and did not specify when or how many times.

'Based on the fact that District Attorney Fani Willis and her Lover were together long prior to the filing date of their Fake Lawsuit against me and many other innocent people, despite their sworn testimony to the contrary, this case must be determined as OVER and, of no further force or effect,' Trump wrote.

'Among other things, in close coordination and conjunction with the DOJ and White House (numerous 8-hour meetings between the Biden people and them in D.C.!), this case was all about stealing close to $1 Million Dollars for Lover Wade, and Election Interference, whereby a vicious and heinous attack is made on Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent. This has never happened in the U.S.A., it is the “stuff” of Third World Countries and Banana Republics!'

Voters are trickling to polling places this morning in South Carolina to make their choice between Nikki Haley or Donald Trump.

More than 200,000 have already cast their ballots in the open primary, meaning voters don't have to be registered to a party to take part.

DailyMail.com reporters are on the ground in The Palmetto State as the wait begins for the results.

To pull off an unlikely upset, Haley will need independents and Democrats to show up in droves.

A South Carolina poll released earlier this week spelled deep trouble for Nikki Haley.

In nearly two to one odds, Trump, 77, is ahead of former United Nations Amb. Haley, 52, in her home state, which holds the fourth and final early contest of the Republican primary after Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

The results came after Haley's state of the race speech on Tuesday where she insisted she is 'far from' dropping out and will remain in the race until Super Tuesday on March 5 despite calls for her to end her bid for the White House.

'I don't think she knows how to get out, actually,' he added.

Among likely Republican voters polled by Suffolk University/USA Today, 63 percent say they will cast their primary election ballot for Trump on Saturday, February 24.

Even though the odds are stacked against her, Nikki Haley is still exuding confidence in the primary in her home state.

She posted campaign video and told her supporters to get out and vote on Saturday morning, despite staring down the barrel of defat.

The former South Carolina governor has vowed to stay in the race until Super Tuesday and keep chipping away at frontrunner Trump.

Trump Jr. was campaigning for his father Friday in South Carolina, a day before the state's Republican primary, where the ex-president is nearly 30 points ahead of his final GOP rival, former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

At the Trump campaign's South Carolina headquarters located in North Charleston, the former first son smacked around Republicans willing to fund Ukraine's war effort against Russia.

'I called out Mitch the Glitch,' Trump Jr. said. 'Can we find someone who doesn't freeze up? It's like Windows 92. Buffering, buffering, buffering.'

He later told DailyMail.com in a gaggle that he had someone in mind for McConnell's replacement.

Nikki Haley has ramped up her perosnal attacks on Donald Trump in her final pleas to voters in her home state of South Carolina.

In Monkc Corner on Friday, she said: 'In a general election, you're given a choice. In a primary election you make your choice. This is the time for us to make our choice.'

A man in the crowd shouted to her 'where is his wife?' referring to Melania Trump.

The crowd laughed, but she didn't respond.

If political advertising won elections, Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley would be completely crushing it in South Carolina against Donald Trump. But it doesn't.

Haley and supporting groups have outspent the former GOP president nearly 15-to-1 ahead of the first in the south primary contest on Saturday. They have put about $15 million into ad buys while Trump's campaign and supporting groups have spent a fraction of that at just over $1 million.

But in the days before the primary, the former president was leading Haley in polling by double-digits.

The USA Today/Suffolk poll of likely Republican primary voters had Trump at 63 percent while Haley was at 35 percent in her home state.

On Friday, Haley argued the goal in the contest is for it to be 'competitive.' She has been crisscrossing the state campaigning much more intensely than Trump while making her closing argument: the United States cannot have more of the same with President Biden and Trump. She has also sharpened her attacks on the former Republican president, and the closing ads promoting Haley reflect that.

In a 30-second Haley campaign spot playing across South Carolina television markets, images of Trump and Biden are shown as a narrator says 'when your country is divided, your president must unite us.' It cuts to images of Haley. The narrator continues 'she ran to revive our state, she got it done.'  It ends with Haley saying she's running for a 'strong' and 'proud' America.

The pro-Haley Super PAC SFA Fund Inc has also been running ads in the state using clips from Haley's recent 'state of the race' speech in which she went after Trump calling him 'unhinged.'

Watching just an hour of primetime television in South Carolina, viewers were likely to be subjected to a barrage of Haley ads that often repeated.

In Nikki Haley's birthplace of Bamberg, those who know her are with her 'all the way' in Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary, but former President Donald Trump will still likely capture a majority in her home county.

DailyMail.com ventured to the rural town Thursday, for the last day of early voting ahead of Saturday's pivotal race, where Trump is expected to trounce the former South Carolina governor in her home state.

A slow stream of voters showed up through the afternoon to an annex of the Bamberg County Courthouse - with a majority saying they were backing Trump - but not those who knew Haley personally.

'I love Nikki like she's a daughter,' said 79-year-old Joyce McMillan. 'She is the most honest, intelligent, fast-learning person I think I have ever met,' she said of the Republican presidential hopeful.'

McMillan was an accountant for Haley's parents when they ran a store in downtown Bamberg and taught the former U.N. ambassador the craft as a young girl.

'I ended up teaching her all the spreadsheets and the financial stuff of the shop when she was only 13 years old,' McMillan told DailyMail.com. 'When I left the business she took over, just at 13, and she's just super smart.'

McMillan said her daughter and Haley are close friends - and roomed together at Clemson.

'And she spent as much time at my house as she did at Nikki's house,' McMillan recalled.

Nikki Haley has vowed to stay in the race no matter what the results of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary on Saturday.

But history is not on her side. In most cases, losing a home state primary has been considered a campaign death blow.

It has been more than 50 years since a Republican presidential candidate has not carried their home state and still gone on to clinch the GOP presidential nomination.

The year was 1968, and Richard Nixon did not win California, the state he once represented in Congress, but he still won the nomination.

The winner of California that Republican presidential primary season was the state's governor, Ronald Reagan. Nixon did go on to win California in November.

Donald Trump will use a major speech to conservatives Saturday to underline the choice facing them in November's election, warning that four more years of President Joe Biden will unleash extremist forces on the country.

Polls suggest he is on course for a landslide primary win over Nikki Haley, his last remaining rival for the Republican nomination, on her home turf of South Carolina later in the day.

And aides say he will all but ignore her challenge for the rest of the race, instead turning his fire on Biden.

That starts at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held just outside Washington D.C., where he will offer a nightmare vision of dangerous streets and campuses patrolled by protesters under another Biden term.

'Just imagine it…With four more years of Biden…Hamas and Antifa will terrorize our streets, while their brutal ideology takes over our schools,' he will say, according to exclusive extracts shared with DailyMail.com.

South Carolina is the fourth and final early contest state in the 2024 Republican presidential primary and voters in the state will have their chance to weigh-in on their preferred candidate on Saturday.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was hoping for a boost in her home state as she remains the last serious contender to try and foil former President Donald Trump's chances of a third straight GOP nomination.

But polling leading up to Election Day show Haley trailing the former president by an average of 30 points.

DailyMail.com breaks down what to watch on primary Election Day in South Carolina.