SC-1 Primary: Colbert Busch, Mark Sanford, one more Republican advance

Colbert Busch and Sanford took the largest pool of votes on Tuesday.

Update: Grooms has conceded and Bostic will face Sanford in a runoff.

Tuesday's results show strong support for Sanford and Busch in their parties, but turnout highlights the challenges before Democrats. 

With a field of 16 Republican candidates, Mark Sanford took a commanding 36.9% of the primary vote for South Carolina's 1st Congressional District.

However Sanford fell short of the 50% mark and will head to a runoff on April 2 against either Curtis Bostic (13.3%) or Sen. Larry Grooms (12.4%).

The second place runoff slot will be decided between Bostic and Grooms pending the results of a state-mandated recount when the difference is less than 1%. Results of that recount are expected by Friday.

Things were far more clean cut on the Democrat side where Elizabeth Colbert Busch took 95.9% of the vote in the face of challenger Ben Frasier.

The number of votes cast by all Republicans totalled 53,657 and Democrats received just a third of that, 16,455.

The difference foreshadows the battle that Busch will have against any Republican challenger, highlighted by Sanford receiving 3,357 more votes than Busch while only capturing a third of his party's vote.

Republican results

Keith Blandford (REP)   0.36% 192
Curtis Bostic (REP)   13.32% 7,149
Ric Bryant (REP)   0.16% 86
Larry Grooms (REP)   12.40% 6,656
Jonathan Hoffman (REP)   0.67% 358
Jeff King (REP)   0.39% 211
John Kuhn (REP)   6.47% 3,471
Tim Larkin (REP)   0.73% 390
Chip Limehouse (REP)   6.09% 3,269
Peter McCoy (REP)   1.61% 865
Elizabeth Moffly (REP)   0.99% 529
Ray Nash (REP)   4.67% 2,504
Andy Patrick (REP)   7.04% 3,776
Shawn Pinkston (REP)   0.29% 154
Mark Sanford (REP)   36.92% 19,812
Teddy Turner (REP)   7.89% 4,235
     Total 53,657
Democrat results     
Elizabeth Colbert Busch (DEM)   95.87% 15,776
Ben Frasier (DEM)   4.13% 679
      16,455

For a more in depth report on the night's numbers, I'll point you to The Post and Courier's report.

Voter turnout was 15.5%.

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