Post-Debate Polls Continue To Show Trump Leading In South Carolina

Post-Debate Polls Continue To Show Trump Leading In South Carolina

Doug Mataconis   ·   Tuesday, February 16, 2016   ·   6 Comments

In the wake of last Saturday’s Republican debate,which was framed sharply by a clash between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush that included Trump going after George W. Bush, who has come into South Carolina to campaign with his brother, on both the Iraq War and the September 11th attacks. as any pundits noted at the time, and in the days afterward, this is something that you simply don’t do in a Republican primary given the fact that the second President Bush remains rather popular among Republicans. It also seems like an unwise in South Carolina in particular given that it is a traditionally conservative state with a large population of active duty and retired military and their families, which is one constituency where support for the former President Bush remains fairly high. As he has done so many times before, though, Trump seems to be proving the pundits wrong and continues pushing ahead in the Palmetto State with just days to go before that state’s Republican primary. Indeed, if the polls are correct, Trump appears to be largely unstoppable just as he was in New Hampshire.
That, at least, appears to be the message from the first set of post-debate polls.
First up among the new polls is a poll commissioned by the South Carolina House Republican Caucus. According to this poll, Donald Trump leads with 33% of the vote, followed by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio tied at 14%, Jeb Bush at 13%, Ohio Governor John Kasich at 10%, and Ben Carson bringing up the rear at 6%. This represents a slip of two points for both Trump and Cruz since the last time this poll was taken, along with a rise of one percent for Marco Rubio, but since all these changes were within the margin of error they aren’t necessarily statistically meaningful changes.
The second poll taken since the debate comes from Public Policy polling and it shows Trump leading with 35%, followed by Cruz and Rubio tied at 18%, giving Trump a seventeen point margin. Coming in behind Trump and Cruz is Ohio Governor John Kasich at ten percent, and behind Kasich are Jeb Bush and Ben Carson who are tied at seven percent. This is a big change from the last PPP poll of South Carolina, which had Ben Carson in second place with 21%, but that poll was taken way back in November so comparing these two sets of numbers doesn’t really make much sense. Looking deeper into the new poll,though, Trump continues to lead even in a smaller race,albeit much more narrowly:

There continues to be evidence that the race for the Republican nomination will get a lot tighter down the line as more candidates drop out. Trump leads Rubio only 46/45 in a head to head match up, with supporters of Bush (73/10), Cruz (67/26), Carson (54/34), and Kasich (50/29) all strongly preferring Rubio to Trump if those were their choices. If Rubio can make the race in South Carolina more into a choice between him and Trump he has the potential to end up with a strong second place finish. Trump has wider leads in head to heads with Bush (50/40) and Cruz (48/38).
These numbers suggest that the attacks on Rubio from Cruz and Bush could end up helping Trump to the extent that they either make it less likely that Rubio is the last man standing against Trump, or that Rubio is a far more damaged candidate when it does. Conversely, the head-to-head numbers for a Trump tete-a-tete with either Cruz or Bush appear to show that Trump’s attacks against them are working well. The poll also shows strong support for even the most controversial aspects of Trump’s platform:
By an 80/9 spread, Trump voters support his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. In fact 31% would support a ban on homosexuals entering the United States as well, something no more than 17% of anyone else’s voters think is a good idea. There’s also 62/23 support among Trump voters for creating a national database of Muslims and 40/36 support for shutting down all the mosques in the United States, something no one else’s voters back. Only 44% of Trump voters think the practice of Islam should even be legal at all in the United States, to 33% who think it should be illegal. To put all the views toward Muslims in context though, 32% of Trump voters continue to believe the policy of Japanese internment during World War II was a good one, compared to only 33% who oppose it and 35% who have no opinion one way or another.

All of this leaves Donald Trump with a huge (Yuge?) margin of 18.5 points in the RealClearpolitics with an average of 36.3%, followed by Ted Cruz at 17.8%, Marco Rubio in third at 15.8%, John Kasich in fourth at 9.8%, Jeb Bush at 9.3%, and Ben Carson all the way down at 5.3%. This isn’t a significant change from where the Palmetto State has been in the past except to the extent that it shows John Kasich, who scored a surprise second place showing in New Hampshire, rising in the polls and Jeb Bush, who one would have thought would be doing better in a state that his father and brother won easily in 1988 and 2000, is performing so poorly. In any case,if these numbers continue then Trump seems likely to put another state in the win column and march forward to Super Tuesday as the presumptive leader of the GOP field.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/post-debate-polls-continue-to-show-trump-leading-in-south-carolina/