Trump back on top, Cruz climbs to second

Donald Trump remains the favorite presidential candidate of South Carolina Republicans in the latest poll from Winthrop University.

Trump still has some time to make up his mind – but not that much time. Thirty-five per cent of GOP members say they’ll support Trump for the nomination. Bernie Sanders to almost 2-1, 56%-29%. Likewise, Ben Carson has sunk to 5 percent.

The poll was conducted Saturday through Tuesday night.

Poll respondents rarely choose a candidate they’ve never heard of or have heard little about. What moved Trump to the top of the polls and keeps him there is his utter dominance of the information environment.

Among registered voters nationwide, neither a Trump nor a Clinton presidency is met with a lot of enthusiasm, but there is somewhat more anxiety about Trump in the White House (64%) than Clinton (57%).

All the leads are within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.

Clinton has long used Trump’s presidential bid as a laugh line in her otherwise wonky stump speech, with his name regularly eliciting boos and hisses from attendees. “It’s unbelievable what they’re proposing”, Knott, the Kasich adviser, said. When the “unfaves” were asked which candidate they disliked more – Clinton or Trump – 45% said they disliked Hillary Clinton more, 42% said Trump, and 13% were undecided.

According to the recent polls, attention and enthusiasm for the campaign are higher among Republican primary voters than among the Democrats. Even if they weren’t wary of alienating his base of support, Trump feeds off of the antagonism of the Republican establishment.

“While Senator Graham’s job approval among S.C. GOP likely voters is above 50%, his approval significantly trails that of S.C.’s junior senator, Tim Scott, and Graham’s approval rating among those who approve of the Tea Party is at 47%, a statistical tie with his disapproval numbers from that group”, Huffmon added. Thus it’s more surprising that Cruz is still relatively close in the polls than that Trump leads in them.

Huffmon observed, “Even though Christians make up 71% of Americans and 78% of South Carolinians (source: Pew – ed.), S.C. GOP voters see Christians as the target of discrimination”.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio, who is supposed to represent a younger segment of the GOP, simply lamented that Trump’s plan was “impulsive” and “not well thought out”, while reiterating the inaccurate and oft-cited Republican claim that there is no evidence of a spike in hate crimes against Muslims. A couple of weeks ago, after Trump said he would consider forcing Muslims in the United States to register in a database, the conservative military historian Max Boot tweeted: “Trump is a fascist”. Bush also registered just 3% support in the CNN poll, just behind New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who garnered 4% support.