In the latest South Carolina Republican Primary Poll of Likely Voters (LV) provided by the Augusta Chronicle has Donald Trump leading the GOP pack by seventeen (17) percentage points. Trump has 36 percent of the vote in the Palmetto State followed by Ted Cruz at 20%.
The Augusta Chronicle teamed up with Morris News Service and Fox 5 in Atlanta and released the results on February 12th just eight days before the South Carolina Republican Primary which will be held on Wednesday, February 20th.Methodology used was random telephonic communications with likely voters from a list of registered Republican voters in South Carolina. The poll was weighted by age, race, gender, evangelicalism and region. The pollsters used previous turnout, external analysis and internal projections.
The Margin of Error (MoE) for this poll was +/- 3.5% with 95% confidence
Based on their polling of the South Carolina likely Republican voters, they determined that Donald Trump is leading the remaining candidates by 17 percentage points polling at 36.3%. Ted Cruz is second with 19.6% followed by
- Marco Rubio 14.6%
- Jeb Bush 10.9%
- Kasich 8.7%
- Ben Carson 4.7%.
- Undecided 5.2%
The most interesting part of this poll was who voters second choice would be if they could not vote for their first choice. That list looks like this:
- Marco Rubio 18.5%
- Ted Cruz 17%
- Donald Trump 15.7%
- Jed Bush 14.7%
- Ben Carson 11.7%
- Undecided 11.5%
South Carolina voters are heavily conservative with nearly 78% of those polled saying they were either ‘Very Conservative’ (42%) or ‘Somewhat Conservative’ (35.8%) which has us wondering the reason that Donald Trump is polling so well here except that Trump is picking up most the the moderate and liberal Republican vote as well, while Cruz commands the ‘Very Conservative’ voters but has a massive drop off with other voters.
Marco Rubio does well across the board as SC GOP LV second choice.
Politisite Political Projections has Donald trump leading the South Carolina Primary by sixteen (16) percentage points. Our polling analysis has the race this way:
- Trump 36%
- Cruz 20%
- Rubio 14%
- Bush 9%
- Kasich 8%
- Carson 6%
Although Ted Cruz is steadily polling at around 20%, we think that Ted Cruz could win in South Carolina. We think this is the reason that Donald Trump is squarely attacking him here. Real Clear Politics has Donald Trump beating Cruz by seventeen (17) percentage points.
Look out for the next polls that come after the CBS Greenville, SC debate that will be held at the Peace Center tonight. Politisite reporters will be providing coverage from the venue. We expect tonight’s debate to be a slug fest between Trump, Cruz and Rubio
