Half of South Carolina Republicans support Trump; Haley leads DeSantis

Half of South Carolina Republicans support former President Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, while Nikki Haley is ahead of Ron DeSantis for second place, according to a new poll. 

A Winthrop University poll found that just more than 50 percent of Republicans, as well as 47.5 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, support the former president. Haley, the former South Carolina governor and former United Nations ambassador, received support from 16.6 percent of Republicans and 18.5 percent of GOP-leaning independents. 

Meanwhile, DeSantis, the governor of Florida, came in third with 12.1 percent from each group. 

“We continue to see Trump’s dominance for the nomination in South Carolina. While a distant second, support for Nikki Haley has grown. Haley’s rise coincides with the continued slide of Ron DeSantis with his drop in national polls being mirrored in South Carolina,” Winthrop Poll Director Scott Huffmon said in a release. 

All other candidates included in the poll were in the single digits. 

The poll found Haley’s favorability in the state is higher than Trump’s, with almost 60 percent of all respondents, including independents and Democrats, saying they have a very or somewhat favorable view of her and about 45 percent saying the same about Trump. 

But Trump performs better than Haley in favorability among Republicans, 50.6 percent to 40.7 percent, and has a significant lead over her and the rest of the GOP field. 

South Carolina will be one of the first states to vote in the Republican nominating process and could be key to Haley’s candidacy with it being her home state. But polling has shown Trump with similarly large leads in the state to those he holds in other states and nationwide, despite Haley rising in the polls recently. 

Huffmon said Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) both perform better when Republican-leaning independents are included in the poll, so appealing to conservative independents might be a way to increase their support. 

The poll was conducted from Sept. 23 to Oct. 1 among 1,569 registered voters. The margin of error for the entire sample was 2.47 points, while the margin of error for Republicans was 3.95 percent and the margin for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents was 3.6 points.