A NEW LOOK AT THE SOUTH CAROLINA PRIMARY. The South Carolina primary, still more than three weeks away, is shaping up to be a critical moment in the lopsided Republican presidential race. Former President Donald Trump has already won Iowa and New Hampshire by double digits, which in the past has meant the contest is pretty much over. But Nikki Haley, who of course is a former South Carolina governor, is Trump’s last challenger in the race. She does not predict that she will win her home state but says her goal is to improve her performance from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina. In Iowa, with multiple candidates in the race, Haley won 19% of the vote, and in New Hampshire, one-on-one against Trump, she won 43%. So in South Carolina, in another one-on-one contest with Trump, she defines success as scoring more than 43%.
There has been a real shortage of polls from South Carolina lately, but now we have, from the Washington Post and Monmouth University, the first survey of the state to be taken after both Iowa and New Hampshire. The new poll finds Trump far ahead, 58% to Haley’s 32%.
The survey shows South Carolina GOP primary voters trust Trump more than Haley to handle every issue the pollsters asked about. On immigration, they trusted Trump by a margin of 62% to Haley’s 22%. On the economy, they trusted Trump 60% to 21%. On foreign affairs, they trusted Trump 54% to 29%. And on abortion, they trusted Trump 35% to 26%, the smallest margin of all the issues but still a Trump advantage.
Those numbers are possibly behind another result. Many voters in the new survey believe both Trump and Haley can defeat President Joe Biden this November. But they still prefer Trump. Seventy percent of those surveyed said they believe Trump will definitely or probably beat Biden, while 60% said they believe Haley will definitely or probably beat Biden. That will make it more difficult for Haley to convince South Carolina voters that only she can defeat Biden — one of the main points of her pitch to voters.
You might remember a few months ago when Trump opponents hoped that all but one of Trump’s challengers would drop out of the race. That way, the thinking went, a single anti-Trump candidate could defeat the former president one-on-one. This poll, especially after the experiences of Iowa and New Hampshire, pretty much obliterates that idea.
In the last Washington Post-Monmouth poll of South Carolina, last September, Trump led with 46%, followed by Haley with 18%, Tim Scott with 10%, Ron DeSantis with 9%, Chris Christie with 5%, Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy with 3% each, and Asa Hutchinson with 2%. Anti-Trump hopefuls looked at that and said: 54% of South Carolina GOP primary voters don’t want Trump! They just needed to unite behind one Trump opponent.
It didn’t work out that way. In the new poll, all the opponents except Haley are gone. But Haley did not receive the support of all the voters who once supported the dropouts. Some of that support went to Trump. Haley’s support is up 14 points since last September, 18% to 32%. But Trump’s support is up 12 points in that time, 46% to 58%. The dream of let’s-all-unite-behind-one-candidate-and-beat-Trump looks like it is not going to happen.
That leaves two options. The first is for Haley to win the support of more Republican voters. That could be tough. In the new poll, Trump leads Haley 77% to 17% among voters who called themselves “strong” Republicans. Even among self-described “soft” Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, Trump leads by 60% to 34%. Only among independents and Democrats does Haley lead, 61% to 15%.
Which leads to the second option — to convince Democrats to vote for Haley in the Republican primary. South Carolina has an open primary, which means anyone can vote in the Republican or Democratic primaries, although they can only vote in one. With the current numbers, it seems obvious that the primary campaign is going to reach a point where Trump opponents beg Democrats to vote for Haley in the Republican primary.
So that is a new look at where things stand in the South Carolina primary campaign. It’s not all that different from before Iowa and New Hampshire. Back then, Trump held a roughly 28-point lead over Haley in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. The new poll has Trump up by 26. That is a big deficit, and Haley’s 32% is also pretty far behind her 43% performance in New Hampshire that she says she will exceed. There are still weeks left, but Haley has a lot of ground to make up.
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