Trump up by 36 points in new South Carolina poll

Former President Trump leads former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by 36 points among likely primary voters in her home state, a poll released Wednesday shows.

In the Winthrop University survey, 64.9 percent of likely South Carolina primary voters say they are more likely to support Trump, compared to 28.7 percent who said they would back the former governor.

Haley’s favorability in her home state has also declined in recent months, as she has emerged as the last major candidate challenging Trump in the GOP primary.

In the survey, 56 percent of registered Palmetto State voters had a favorable view of Haley, down from 75 percent in November 2023. Her unfavorable rating, by the same token, has increased — at 33 percent in February 2024, up from 16 percent in November.

In an analysis of the poll, Scott Huffman, director of Winthrop’s Center for Public Opinion & Policy Research, suggested the decline in Haley’s favorability coincided with her sharpening of her rhetoric against Trump in recent weeks.

“With the exception of when she defied the Tea Party and endorsed Mitt Romney in the GOP primary, she has always enjoyed very high approval and favorability ratings among Republicans in her home state,” Huffman wrote.

“However, as we look at her favorability ratings among Republicans in South Carolina between the November 2023 Winthrop Poll and now, we see a significant dip in favorability and a rise in unfavorability that seems to correspond with her increasing attacks on Trump,” he wrote.

Huffman added: “This would seem to indicate that in South Carolina, as apparently in the nation as a whole, that the Republican Party is very much Trump’s party.”

The poll comes just 10 days ahead of the South Carolina GOP primary. In The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s average of polls, Trump maintains a 34.8 percentage point lead over Haley, 64.5 percent to Haley’s 29.7 percent.

The Winthrop poll, conducted Feb. 2-10, surveyed 1,717 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.36 percentage points for the full sample.