Does South Carolina have too much, too little, or an ok amount of influence on who gets nominated?

[Schiff for Senate]

Right amount.  Collectively, IA, NH, NV, and SC are reasonably representative.  They can be first, but should vote simultaneously.  It’s fine to have a select group of small states go first, as long as they collectively contain some diversity and are fairly representative of the nation at-large.

I was born in Iowa, yet I don’t objectively believe it should always be first.  But New Hampshire’s case is not any stronger.  Sorry.  (Except for maybe the fact that it has a proper primary, but it’s still a rural, overwhelmingly white state).

NH may be white, but it's not exactly rural. Most of the population lives in Southern New Hampshire, in urban areas that border Massachusetts (like Manchester and Nashua).

[Schiff for Senate]

Right amount.  Collectively, IA, NH, NV, and SC are reasonably representative.  They can be first, but should vote simultaneously.  It’s fine to have a select group of small states go first, as long as they collectively contain some diversity and are fairly representative of the nation at-large.

I was born in Iowa, yet I don’t objectively believe it should always be first.  But New Hampshire’s case is not any stronger.  Sorry.  (Except for maybe the fact that it has a proper primary, but it’s still a rural, overwhelmingly white state).

NH may be white, but it's not exactly rural. Most of the population lives in Southern New Hampshire, in urban areas that border Massachusetts (like Manchester and Nashua).

True, I should have said relatively rural.  It is still more rural and whiter than Iowa, though.

I'd say they're roughly the same. East Iowa is kind of urban, but West Iowa, outside of Des Moines, is much more rural than any part of New Hampshire. And not all rural areas are the same. Rural Iowa is culturally and politically (it's a lot redder than rural New Hampshire) different from rural New Hampshire in many ways.

[Schiff for Senate]

Right amount.  Collectively, IA, NH, NV, and SC are reasonably representative.  They can be first, but should vote simultaneously.  It’s fine to have a select group of small states go first, as long as they collectively contain some diversity and are fairly representative of the nation at-large.

I was born in Iowa, yet I don’t objectively believe it should always be first.  But New Hampshire’s case is not any stronger.  Sorry.  (Except for maybe the fact that it has a proper primary, but it’s still a rural, overwhelmingly white state).

NH is hardly rural. About half the state comes from big cities in far southern and coastal regions of the state. NH is more like ME than VT in terms of its rural/urbanness, and it's probably even more urban than ME. (ME is complicated because ME01 is very urban and ME02 is very rural, but overall I'd never call ME a 'rural' state exactly.)

[Schiff for Senate]

In answer to the original question - it depends. 

For the GOP, probably. I mean, SC Republicans are basically IA Republicans (religious), except they're more likely to be racist - this is a state where the GOP did not disavow, and the state reelected, a man who ran for president as a 'Dixiecrat', in 1996 and unlike George Wallace, Thurmond never even apologized. (And before anyone tells me that that was 1996 and this is 25 years later, Joe Wilson, who worked for Thurmond, is currently a Republican from SC serving in the House of Representatives, and someone who called the country's first black president a liar without any evidence for political show.) The effect SC had on McCain's compaign in 2000 was devastating, and quite unfair considering the attacks lodged against McCain's adopted daughter. 

For the Democrats, maybe. African-Americans are a key voting bloc for Democrats, and they deserve to have a loud voice in who gets nominated, which is why SC going early in the primaries is important. On the other hand, however, Joe Biden got way too much of a boost from SC in 2020. It definitely didn't need to be an important as it was in 2020. It basically ended the campaigns of most of Biden's opponents (and they lined up behind him), and from that point on Sanders' campaign was the underdog rather than the front-runner.