John Kasich, who ran explicitly as a moderate in New Hampshire and who is defending his expansion of Medicaid tonight, is not a terribly natural fit for South Carolina. But with an open primary, the state’s electorate isn’t quite as conservative as you might think. In 2012, 32 percent of Republican voters in South Carolina identified as moderate or liberal, placing it exactly halfway in between Iowa (17 percent) and New Hampshire (47 percent).
CORRECTION (10:14 p.m.): An earlier version of this post incorrectly said that Kasich defended his expansion of Medicare in Ohio. He expanded Medicaid, not Medicare.
