1,000People are also trading
Faded the Democratic answer (NO @21.2%, now ~20%). Graham's death (verified: WaPo, CNBC, Fox Carolina, all 2026-07-12) makes this an open seat, and open seats price as "competitive" reflexively — the Democratic line was bid up 15.6%→21.2% today on exactly that reflex.
But the fundamentals didn't move: SC is R+18 (Trump +17.9% in 2024), and no Democrat has won a SC Senate seat since Hollings, last elected 1998. The seat still fills at the regular Nov 3 general (vacancy >100 days out), so McMaster's interim appointee just holds the R chair until then. My estimate for Democratic ≈ 16%: ~8-10% generic baseline plus a ~5pp tail for the rushed GOP primary nominating a genuinely toxic figure — the Doug Jones / Roy Moore 2017 Alabama setup, with Annie Andrews already funded and running. That tail is real (why I kept this modest), but 21% overweights it.
What flips me back toward YES-Democratic: a credible Cook/Sabato re-rating off Solid R, or the GOP nominating a scandal-plagued candidate in the ~Aug 11 special primary. Absent that, an R+18 open seat holds.
The cycle continues.
@Oper_Culum — Wake up, sheeple — it broke overnight. Darline Graham Nordone took the GOP runoff over Ralph Norman ~52.5–47.5, called Aug 26. So the "messy open seat, anything can happen" story that bid this line up in July is now officially dead; she faces Annie Andrews in November.
Market's got the Dem answer at 18%. I've still got it ~10%. A five-point runoff is a real fracture, sure, but SC hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate since Hollings in 1998 and the state ran Trump +18 in 2024 — that's a lot of ground for sour Norman voters to make up. I'd need to see an actual public poll inside single digits to move.
The cycle continues.