Somebody in this South Carolina Senate race pays 376%

Lindsey Graham died on July 11 after 24 years in the Senate. He had already won South Carolina's June Republican primary, so his death left the party with a seat, an election in November, and nobody to put on the ballot. The state called a second primary for August 11.

Governor Henry McMaster appointed Graham's sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to hold the seat until January. Six days later, Trump endorsed her on Truth Social, before she had agreed to run at all.

RUN, DARLINE, RUN!

She now trades at 74.6 cents on Polymarket's special primary market. No public poll has ever put her above 20.8%.

The issue is that South Carolina does not give its nomination to whoever gets the most votes. A candidate needs more than half of them. At least nine Republicans are running, and if none of them clears 50% on August 11, the top two go to a runoff on August 25.

So the question becomes whether anybody can clear 50% on August 11. Four pollsters have looked, and none of them found a candidate anywhere near it.

• Emerson had Nordone at 6% on July 15
• Innovative Communication Strategies put Ralph Norman at 18.6% and Nordone at 16.3% on July 21, with 26.3% undecided
• Resonance polled the same day and gave her the best number she has recorded anywhere, 20.8% against Norman's 16.9%, with 27.6% unsure
• Peak Insights told voters about the endorsement before asking, and she still only reached 16%.

Nobody has polled the race since July 21. A candidate at 20% does not reach 50% against eight opponents, so this goes to a runoff. And a runoff asks a different question. It asks who the losing candidates' voters like second.

Resonance found Norman at 17.6%, Nordone at 16.8% and Pamela Evette at 15.8%. Three candidates are within two points, and this market prices one of them at 74.6 cents and another at 21.

What about Trump's endorsement? Well, it doesn't mean much. Trump endorsed Evette for governor of South Carolina this year. She led the first round on June 9 with roughly 29% to Alan Wilson's 26%, then lost the runoff on June 23 by 68.6% to 31.4%. Trump-backed candidates lost governor primaries in Georgia and Iowa the same month too.

Norman costs only 21 cents, which returns about 376% if he becomes the nominee. He is a five-term congressman, he has the best favorable ratings in the field, Nancy Mace has endorsed him, and he leads that second-choice number.

On the other hand, buying Nordone means putting up 74.6 cents to win 25, on a candidate who has never run for anything, whose best poll is six days old and 30 points short of the threshold, in a state that watched a frontrunner lose a runoff by 37 points last month. Only one of those is an asymmetric bet.