Donald Trump is projected to win the South Carolina Republican primary, according to US media.

That's it - polls are now closed across the state.

What's next is that we wait for the race to be characterised by US media outlets - which is when we get a very early estimate of which candidates have done well.

Then we wait for the official projections of who has won. We'll keep you updated.

Jonathan Csapo
BBC producer, reporting from Columbia

Image source, Reuters

Eric Trump just walked past us here outside his father's campaign headquarters.

"We are feeling great, we are feeling great," he told the BBC.

That was reinforced moments later when he entered the headquarters. He was met with booming cheers of: "We love you Eric!" and "Lara! Lara!" in reference to his wife Lara Trump who stood at his side.

Other Trump surrogates are here as well, including Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.

Holly Honderich
Reporting from Charleston

Things look fairly grim for Nikki Haley as polls are about to close, but she is doing just fine at the bank.

The Republican's ambitions have been buoyed by deep-pocketed donors who have continued to pour funds into her campaign.

Haley raised $16.5m in January alone, campaign officials said. That's her largest monthly total so far, and it blew past Donald Trump's numbers.

Of her big-dollar donors, several have justified their spending on the long-shot bid using Haley’s own argument: that she is the competent counter to Trump’s chaos.

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, said he had donated to Haley “because my first priority is American democracy and the integrity of our legal system. That means my first priority is to defeat Trump”.

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

Who might clear front-runner Trump pick as his vice-presidential running mate?

That certainly was a topic of conversation at Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC, over the past four days.

Attendees at the annual gathering of right-wing activists, lobbyists and businesses - dominated in recent years by the Trump faithful - cast ballots in a straw poll. The results, which included 17 possible candidates, were announced Saturday night:

• South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem - 15%
• Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy - 15%
• Former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard - 9%
• New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik - 8%
• South Carolina Senator Tim Scott - 8%
• Florida congressman Byron Donalds - 7%

Read more on the potential VPs here.

Holly Honderich
Reporting from South Carolina

On Wednesday, I met a Democrat at a Nikki Haley rally.

Tricia Ferguson, from North Augusta, South Carolina, said she would vote for Haley in the Republican primary in an effort to block Donald Trump from the presidency.

“I disagree with her on a lot of things but when it comes down to it, I think she will compromise when it’s necessary, and I think she recognises that this still is a democratic republic, and you do have to listen to other sides,” she said.

But by Saturday, Ferguson had changed her mind.

She was angered, she said, to hear Haley say Joe Biden was a greater threat than Donald Trump.

“I wanted to scream,” she said. Ferguson’s U-turn represents a key challenge for Haley.

She’s trying to build a broad coalition, appealing to moderates and independents, but seems afraid of alienating the Republican base. In the end, she could risk not appealing to anyone at all.

South Carolina's electorate is very different from the ones seen in the last two Republican contests in New Hampshire and Nevada.

Republican voters who consider themselves "very conservative" showed up in strong numbers, based on CBS News exit polling.

Nearly half of voters also identified with Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement, and about six in 10 voters were white evangelicals - compared to 39% in the 2016 primary.

These numbers put those who voted in a similar bracket to the electorate of Iowa, the first state to vote in the Republican race. But South Carolina is much larger than Iowa.

Nikki Haley may have been hoping to shock pollsters by bringing non-Republican voters into the fold today, but exit polls show only about a quarter of those who voted consider themselves independent and only 4% are Democrats.

What do Donald Trump supporters think about his legal troubles?

We spoke to voters waiting outside a Trump rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, yesterday. They seemed unbothered by the former president's many indictments.

"I think he always comes out smelling like roses," said one supporter about the former president's court cases.

Donald Trump didn't mention Nikki Haley in his CPAC speech earlier today, but his campaign put out a statement earlier that excoriated his opponent.

It said that Haley's "delusion is clouding her judgement, and she is no longer living in reality".

"She continues to gaslight voters and the media into believing she has a chance to win her home state of South Carolina and other states when she hasn’t received any type of real support or shown even a shred of momentum," said Steven Cheung, spokesperson.

Haley is trailing behind Trump by around 30 points in recent polls of South Carolina voters, and her numbers look worse in the party's upcoming contests.

Will Vernon
Reporting from Columbia, South Carolina

I met Zoe Owen and her husband Sion who were out campaigning for Haley in Columbia with just a short time left until polls close.

Zoe says her husband recently switched his allegiance from Donald Trump to Nikki Haley: “"He was like, OK I’m off the Trump train!"

“America always likes a great underdog,” Sian tells me. “And I think she's got that. That gumption or hutzpah to really take on that fight. Donald Trump is mired down. How much focus can he give to our country, with all these legal problems?”

Zoe and Sion are put off by what they call Donald Trump’s “demagoguery”.

"In America, we don't have people that we bow down to," Zoe says. "The only person that we bow down to is God. Donald Trump is not a god, and Donald Trump is not a king.”

It appears that immigration is growing into the main issue animating Republican voters as the primary rolls on, according to additional exit polling conducted by our US partners at CBS News.

In the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, most voters chose the economy as their top concern - though immigration was a close second.

But immigration was top of mind for four in every 10 South Carolina voters, the exit polling data shows.

However, those who voted for Nikki Haley told CBS the economy was their prime concern, with foreign policy close behind.

There's only one more hour to go before the polls close across South Carolina.

Early exit polling conducted by our US partners at CBS News shows that nine in every 10 voters surveyed are unhappy with how things are going in the country.

In fact, nearly half of voters told CBS they were angry with the state of the US - notably higher than the 36% who said the same on primary day in New Hampshire.

More than eight in 10 voters also said they felt the economy was not doing well - in spite of positive economic trends and rising consumer sentiment in recent months.

Trump voters meanwhile overwhelmingly reject his lone rival Nikki Haley's claim that he no longer has the mental or physical fitness for office.

Holly Honderich
Reporting from Charleston, South Carolina

Image source, Getty Images

Could this be the end of the road for Nikki Haley? So far, all signs point to no.

Despite some ominous-looking polls in her home state and three consecutive losses to Donald Trump already, the former UN ambassador says she’s sticking with it.

Asked yesterday if there was any margin of loss to Trump that would push Haley to drop out, her campaign manager Betsy Ankeny said her team would be "marching on".

"We know the odds," Ankeny said, but Haley will push on anyway, with events already set up on Sunday and Monday in Michigan, where Republicans will have their primary on 27 February.

Nikki Haley has sharply criticised her rival Donald Trump today for making what she's called "disgusting" comments about black Americans.

Trump, who is expected to win today's primary in South Carolina, suggested that black voters would favour him because they could relate to him for being discriminated against.

"It's disgusting," she said at a polling station earlier. "But that's what happens when he goes off the teleprompter. That's the chaos that comes with Donald Trump."

Trump - who is facing four criminal indictments - made the comments on Friday evening in a speech to black conservatives.

He said: "Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against... We've all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The black population. It's incredible."

Black voters were a key part of the coalition that helped Joe Biden win the last election. As our reporter Brandon Drenon explored, in South Carolina, however, many are frustrated with the president - and some are backing Trump.

Sam Cabral
Reporting from South Carolina

Micah Rea, 30, says political observers should expect a quick result tonight. He believes turnout will be fairly strong and overwhelming in favour of Donald Trump.

And he has good insight as both a native of Greenville, South Carolina, and the chair of the International Committee for the National Young Republicans.

He says his former governor, Nikki Haley, is in for a hometown drubbing, as voters here "don’t like the way she has been criticising Trump".

Far from faltering due to his legal troubles and various controversies, Micah says Trump is on the rise among constituencies he had previously struggled with here, including young and minority voters.

Each primary is making it clearer that the Republican base is looking ahead to the general election in November and hoping Trump will "fire Joe Biden", he adds.

A win in South Carolina does not guarantee a candidate will go on to be the Republican presidential candidate - but it often matches up.

Let’s take a look at the past few Republican winners.

• 2020 - South Carolina cancelled its Republican primary because as incumbent, Donald Trump's path was pretty clear
• 2016 - Trump won South Carolina and won the presidential nomination
• 2012 - Newt Gingrich won South Carolina but Mitt Romney won the nomination
• 2008 - John McCain won South Carolina and won the nomination
• 2004 - There was no Republican primary, as George W Bush faced no challenger
• 2000 - George W Bush won South Carolina and the nomination

Holly Honderich
Reporting from Charleston

I've been out speaking to voters in Charleston. Holt Moran, from Aiken, South Carolina, tells me he was a lifelong Republican until Donald Trump came along.

Trump is a "danger to the country", he says.

Since then, Moran has voted for Democrats.

But Nikki Haley has given him hope for the Republican party, he says.

"She’s just the perfect person. She’s got an outstanding record, I think she can bring the Republican Party back to where it was.”

Unfortunately for Moran, not enough Republicans seem to feel the same. Even in South Carolina, the state that elected Haley as governor two times over, the party now belongs to Trump.

Sam Cabral
Reporting from Columbia, South Carolina

Polls across the state have been open since 07:00 local time on a day that has been both sunny and windy.

Here at the Olympia Learning Center, the school has converted its basketball court into a polling location for residents from four Richland County precincts.

Elections clerk Tamara Jacobs tells me hundreds of voters have been arriving - including the state's governor, Henry McMaster, who is backing Donald Trump.

Jacobs has worked elections here for "four or five cycles", she says. She joined because she once wasted time in a very long line at a polling location and noticed the volunteers often skew older even as voting technology evolves.

"So I did what anybody to do and signed up to help," she tells me.

Image source, Reuters

Nikki Haley is a former governor of South Carolina and has said she hopes to “bring it home” in this primary.

But she’s badly trailing her former boss Trump, whom she served as UN ambassador from 2017. Recent polls show she is some 30 points behind Trump on her home turf.

Nationally, that margin is even wider. This fuelled speculation she might quit - but she's repeatedly vowed to stay in.

“South Carolina will vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I'll still be running for president. I'm not going anywhere.”

She’s been continuing her campaign in earnest, scheduling a flurry of events across the country. She has gone so far as to announce campaign teams in Texas, Georgia, Vermont and California.

Haley pledged to at least finish the 16 races on Super Tuesday - which is in 10 days’ time on 5 March.

Read more: Defeat to Trump looms, so why is Haley still in?

South Carolina has "open" primaries, which mean you don’t need to be a registered member of a political party to be able to vote.

However, you can only vote in one primary - so people can’t vote in both the Democratic and Republican primaries.

The Democratic primary was on 3 February (Joe Biden won - you can read about it here).

So, as long as someone didn’t vote in that, they're eligible to vote today - even if they're not a registered Republican. More on the rules here., external