
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.
| 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%.



