Trafalgar Group poll shows Darline Graham and Ralph Norman in a near tie ahead of South Carolina Senate runoff

South Carolina voters are set to vote Tuesday in a Republican runoff that will determine which candidate will appear on the ballot for the state’s U.S. Senate seat, after a new Trafalgar Group survey showed Sen. Darline Graham and Rep. Ralph Norman nearly tied for support.

The Hill reported that Trafalgar Group conducted the poll from Saturday through Monday among 1,031 respondents. The survey found Graham backed by 47.9 percent of those polled, with Norman’s support described as essentially matching Graham within the survey’s margin of error.

Because the runoff is designed to select the Republican nominee, the practical effect of a near tie is straightforward for election administration: whichever candidate receives the most votes Tuesday will move on, regardless of survey results released shortly before Election Day.

The polling follows a pattern common in tight intra-party contests, where turnout and voter preference shifts over a short period can have an outsized impact on the final vote total. In such races, polling is often used to describe the closeness of the contest rather than to determine the outcome, particularly when survey results are statistically indistinguishable.

For voters, the runoff also means procedural choices matter, including how ballots are cast and counted under South Carolina’s election rules. With both campaigns operating in the same closed primary process for the nomination, the winner will be the Republican candidate presented to voters in the general election.

The Hill’s report places the contest in the Senate nomination track, and the winner’s path to the general election depends on Tuesday’s results, not the direction or interpretation of the poll. Election law and state election procedures control the certifying process and the timeline for final ballot status after the runoff.

As polls tighten in the final days, both candidates are likely to rely on get-out-the-vote operations and on-the-ground turnout measures for Tuesday’s election, according to how this kind of runoff nomination works under state election processes.

No official election result was available as of the publication of the polling report, and the only determinant of the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate ballot will be the vote totals from Tuesday’s runoff.