ROCK HILL, S.C. — Donald Trump and Nikki Haley stumped across South Carolina Friday on the eve of the state's Republican presidential primary on Saturday.
With Thursday marking the conclusion of early voting, the candidates are now making a final push for anyone who intends to vote on Saturday in person.
Trump appeared Friday in both Rock Hill and Columbia. His son, Donald Trump, Jr., was campaigning for the former president in Charleston and North Charleston.
The candidates have been crisscrossing the state ahead of Saturday's presidential primary.
Recent polling from Winthrop University shows Donald Trump with a strong lead over Haley with about 65% of support from likely GOP voters, WCNC Charlotte's Ben Thompson analyzed on this week's episode of Flashpoint.
Chase Meyer, a professor at the University of South Carolina, told Thompson Haley will need about 40% of the vote to convince donors she still has a shot of winning the nomination.
"If that doesn't happen, she might be dropping out sooner than she anticipated," Meyers speculated.
The allies of Haley, the last major Republican candidate standing in Donald Trump's path to the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination, are privately bracing for a blowout loss in her home state's primary election in South Carolina on Saturday. And they cannot name a state where she is likely to beat Trump in the coming weeks.
Haley told The Associated Press that she will not leave the Republican primary election regardless of Saturday's result. And backed by the strongest fundraising numbers of her political career, she vowed to stay in the fight against Trump at least until after Super Tuesday's slate of more than a dozen states — including North Carolina — on March 5.
Polls open Saturday at 7 a.m. and remain open until 7 p.m.
President Joe Biden won South Carolina's Democratic primary earlier this month.
The Associated Press, WLTX, and Tegna contributed to this report