This is the digital version of From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter covering the biggest stories in politics. Today’s top story is from Ben Kamisar, plus analysis from Steve Kornacki.

President Joe Biden could be facing a turnout problem in 2024. And an experimental stealth campaign during South Carolina’s Democratic primary highlights one way players in the Republican Party will be trying to exploit Biden’s weaknesses.

A conservative group funded by anonymous donors sent mailers to approximately 75,000 Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, a heavily Black electorate, ahead of the Feb. 3 primary there, criticizing Biden over his administration’s push to ban menthol cigarettes. Black smokers are more likely to use menthol cigarettes, according to research cited by the FDA, and the potential ban has divided civil rights groups.

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Biden won the South Carolina primary overwhelmingly, with 96% support — but the bigger question is whether the mailer, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, pushed recipients to stay home instead of turning out. That kind of result, or pushing voters to consider a third-party option, could have a much bigger effect in the fall in a close swing state.

A source familiar with the strategy driving the group, Building America’s Future, told NBC News that while it’s still analyzing how the mailers affected recipients’ votes in the South Carolina primary, the nonprofit is planning to reinvest in a similar strategy later this year. 

The group is planning to spend more than $1 million on efforts aimed at pushing base Democratic voters away from Biden in the general election, primarily in battleground states. It plans to target predominantly Black voters in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin with a mix of television, digital, radio and direct mail. But the group may also target young voters, too, as it did during golf’s WM Phoenix Open this month by focusing on concerns about potential bans on nicotine pouches like Zyn. 

Read the full story here →

Nikki Haley’s home-field disadvantage? Republican voters

Analysis by Steve Kornacki

As the primary calendar turns to Haley’s home state of South Carolina this Saturday, her campaign’s math problem isn’t going to get much easier to solve. 

Polling puts her far behind Donald Trump in the state, with no indication that she’s made any new inroads with core Republican voters. This means that Haley’s hopes for an upset victory — which she probably needs to maintain any plausibility as a candidate — will rest on her ability to attract support from non-Republicans and to turn them out at levels never before seen in a South Carolina primary.

To put her challenge in perspective, take a look at the breakdown of South Carolina GOP primary electorates this century (and note that the state doesn’t register voters by party, meaning that anyone can participate in the GOP contest and that the figures below reflect how voters identified their own partisan loyalties in past exit polls):