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Tim Scott, the US senator from South Carolina, has dropped out of the 2024 Republican presidential primary race, narrowing the field of candidates vying to challenge Donald Trump for the party’s nomination next year.
Scott announced his decision on Fox News following a lacklustre campaign in which he tried to woo Republican voters with an optimistic vision of the country and staunchly conservative policies.
“I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters . . . have been really clear that they’re telling me: ‘Not now, Tim’,” Scott said on Sunday. “I don’t think they’re saying ‘no’, but I do think they’re saying: ‘Not now’.”
Scott has long been considered a rising star within the Republican party, with a strong record of fundraising partly thanks to his role in Congress as a senior member of the Senate banking committee.
But his performance in national polls has been dismal throughout the campaign. According to a polling average from RealClearPolitics, Scott had the backing of just 2.5 per cent of Republican voters when he announced his departure from the race.
Fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the UN, has fared far better, with a national polling average of 9 per cent, putting her in third place behind former president Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
Scott’s exit marks the second high-profile departure from the Republican presidential field after Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence suspended his campaign last month.
Scott and Pence are firm conservatives on social issues, including abortion, who tried in vain to appeal to evangelical Christian voters.
“We all know life is hard and getting harder in Joe Biden’s America. Like you, we want our families to live safe, prosperous, happy lives and follow the Judeo-Christian values that built our society,” Scott wrote in a fundraising email sent just minutes before he announced the end of his campaign.
Republican candidates who are performing poorly in polls are under growing pressure to drop out of the race to narrow the field of potential rivals to Trump for the nomination.
Trump has opened up a huge lead of more than 40 percentage points in the Republican primary despite the 91 federal and state criminal indictments he has faced this year. He also has a narrow lead over US president Joe Biden in a likely rematch of the 2020 election next year, according to RealClearPolitics, including in several recent swing state polls.
The remaining rivals to Trump, including DeSantis, Haley and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, will now seek Scott’s endorsement. DeSantis praised Scott following the latter’s exit as “a strong conservative with bold ideas about how to get our country back on track”.
The Florida governor added that he looked “forward to Tim continuing to be a leader in our party for years to come”.
Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Scott’s endorsement was unlikely to transform the race.
“Another one bites the dust,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “Don’t bother trying to figure out where his votes go. There aren’t enough to measure.”
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