CLEVELAND, OH - JULY 19: Lt. Gov. of South Carolina, Henry McMaster delivers a speech during the start of the second day of the Republican National Convention on July 19, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. An estimated 50,000 people are expected in Cleveland, including hundreds of protesters and members of the media. The four-day Republican National Convention kicked off on July 18. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump is not on the ballot, but he has invested time, energy and political capital in a slate of primary contests across America that will again test his clout within his own party.

Voters weigh in on candidates in seven states Tuesday, but the contest that matters most to Trump is South Carolina, where he appeared ata rally to help Gov. Henry McMaster hours before polls opened. The Republican governor, one of Trump’s first high-profile supporters, is fighting for his political life against self-made millionaire John Warren in a runoff election that threatens to embarrass the White House if McMaster falls short. “Henry was for me from the beginning. There was nobody else,” Trump said Monday night before giving his audience an order: “Get your asses out tomorrow and vote.”

The South Carolina gubernatorial race headlined the latest in a series of primary contests that stretched across New York, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Maryland and Mississippi on Tuesday. With the November general election nearly four months away, more than half of all states will have selected their general-election candidates after the day’s votes are counted.

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