South Carolina Election Results 2016: Donald Trump scores victory over Hillary Clinton

Impact

A key win for Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, South Carolina again delivered a majority of its votes to the Republican presidential nominee. Trump's victory over Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton was called just after 8 p.m. Eastern Tuesday. 

South Carolina has only voted for the Democratic presidential nominee once since 1964. Mitt Romney won the state by more than 10 percentage points in 2012, a margin Trump did not achieve. Polls showed a tighter race in South Carolina than in past presidential elections, a sign of Trump's difficultly marshaling traditional Republican voters to support him. 

The state's nine electoral votes are considered a guarantee for any Republican presidential candidate. The state is substantially more conservative than North Carolina, South Carolina's larger, more strategically important neighbor.