Is South Carolina in play in the presidential election? Here’s the latest poll
President Donald Trump has a single point lead over former Vice President Joe Biden in South Carolina in the latest Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.
Surveyed in the week leading up to Tuesday night’s first presidential debate, 48% of S.C. voters said they would pick Trump while 47% said they would pick Biden.
The poll also says Trump’s approval rating was 49% in the state compared to 48% disapproval.
The poll suggests the race may be narrowing for the candidates at the top of the ticket. Two weeks ago, Trump had a 51% to 45% lead over Biden in another Quinnipiac poll.
Trump carried South Carolina in 2016 by 14 percentage points over then-Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
September has been a rough month for Trump, which included news breaking about the president having paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, according to the New York Times, and the release of a book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward in which Trump admitted to downplaying the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I would say the President is truly on the ropes right now,” said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.
Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and his Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison are still tied at 48%, the same as Quinnipiac’s poll released two weeks ago.
“Lindsey Graham is being challenged like he’s never been before, which means he’s not terribly popular,” Malloy said. “Lindsey Graham is close to the president. He speaks to the president often, so its probably no coincidence that both of them simultaneously have lost enough ground to be challenged.”
Pollsters found that likely voters are almost evenly split on who should fill the Supreme Court vacancy: 49% say it should be the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election and 47% say Trump is right for moving forward now.
Graham is the Senate Judiciary chairman and is going forward with Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings starting on Oct. 12. Trump nominated the federal appeals judge to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The latest Quinnipiac poll comes out on the heals of a CBS News/YouGov poll that had Graham up by 1 percentage point, and showed a majority of respondents in the state favored moving forward with a Supreme Court confirmation vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. The CBS News poll was conducted between Sept. 22 and Sept. 25.
The CBS News poll had Trump with a much greater advantage over Biden, leading the former vice president 52% to 42% among Palmetto State voters.
The Quinnipiac poll of 1,123 people was conducted between Sept. 22 and Sept 27, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed self-identified as Republicans, along with 28% Democrats and 30% Independents.
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 3:32 PM with the headline "Is South Carolina in play in the presidential election? Here’s the latest poll."
