- South Carolina is holding its congressional primaries on June 9.
- The biggest race to watch is the Republican primary for South Carolina's first congressional district, where Nancy Mace and Kathy Landing are facing off to take on Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham.
- Polls in South Carolina closed at 7 p.m. E.T.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The races:
On the US Senate side, Jaime Harrison is the only Democratic candidate running to challenge GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, and will formally clinch the nomination today.
While Graham, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is almost certainly going to be re-nominated, he faces three primary challengers who argue he isn't pro-Trump and conservative enough, the Associated Press reported.
In the US House of Representatives, the biggest primary to watch is the Republican primary in South Carolina's first congressional district in the Lowcountry area, which includes the city of Charleston.
Democrat Joe Cunningham narrowly won back the seat — which Trump carried by nearly 13 percentage points in 2016 and had been in Republican hands for 38 years — by less than two points in one of the biggest upsets of the 2018 midterms.
Cunningham beat former State Representative Katie Arrington, who had defeated former Rep. Mark Sanford earlier that year in a nasty and acrimonious primary challenge that spilled over into the general election.
Now, the Post & Courier recently reported, Republicans are laser-focused on winning back the seat while avoiding the same toxic conditions that partly caused them to lose it in the first place.
The two main candidates in the Republican primary are State Representative Nancy Mace, a former coalitions director for Trump's 2016 campaign who has backed by the Club For Growth PAC, and Mount Pleasant Town Councilmember Kathy Landing, who has been endorsed by the Republican Main Street Partnership PAC and the House Freedom Caucus' PAC.
The Cook Political Report, Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and Inside Elections all rate South Carolina's first district as a tossup in the general election.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Carolina is allowing all voters to request an absentee ballot without an excuse, leading to record-breaking levels of voting by mail.
South Carolina officials also allowed mail-in votes to be counted starting Monday morning and invested in high-speed ballot processing machines this year to make the counting process more efficient.
Consolidated polling places and a shortage of poll-workers, however, caused long lines and wait times for those who tried to vote in person in big cities like Charleston and Columbia.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly
https://ift.tt/2YlR5NL