NUMBERS … AND PUSHBACK …
We dogged it out a bit yesterday, but government-run Winthrop University’s political science department has released its latest poll findings – for what they’re worth.
According to the survey, U.S. president Donald Trump has a 43 percent approval rating among South Carolinians – with 47 percent who disapprove of the job he is doing.
Do we buy that spread? Eh … maybe … although truth be told, if Winthrop’s pollsters had asked us that question this month we’d probably have been in the “disapprove” category. And yeah – we’ve been among Trump’s most consistent supporters in the past (prior to him deciding to attack fiscal conservatives, launch missiles at Syria, abandon his tax plan and flip-flop on key campaign promises).
Anyway, the poll found that 47 percent of respondents approve of the way new S.C. governor Henry McMaster is handling his job – compared to 21 percent who disapprove and 28 percent who said they “didn’t know” what they thought of his job performance.
Those are decent numbers for McMaster given the cloud of scandal hanging over his administration – and dragging down his fundraising totals.
But we agree with the Winthrop poll’s assessment that “the key for Governor McMaster are those 28 percent who have yet to form an opinion of his job performance.”
“More than a quarter of South Carolinians are taking a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude in these early months of his administration,” the pollsters noted.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham‘s numbers were a bit more defined – and similar to Trump’s – with 45 percent approving of his job performance and 47 percent disapproving, according to the survey.
Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Tim Scott enjoyed the support of 60 percent of respondents – with only 27 percent disapproving of his job performance.
Winthrop surveyed 878 South Carolina residents using a mix of landlines and cell phones between April 2 and April 11. The survey claims a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
Of interest? As we were preparing our report, we received an email from Winthrop pollster Scott Huffmon decrying our “sadly misguided attacks on the poll.”
“Anyone who accuses our polls of deliberate partisan bias is either purposefully lying, or woefully uninformed. Period,” Huffmon wrote.
To be clear, we didn’t accuse Huffmon’s poll of being biased – we accused it of being wrong as it related to the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in South Carolina.
To his credit, Huffmon acknowledged that “we were off on the (2016) gap of victory by a good bit.”
“I wish we had gotten closer, but I’m glad we didn’t get it wrong,” Huffmon told us, referring to the final outcome of the presidential race in South Carolina.
Huffmon added that his survey would continue to “measure the opinions of all (South Carolina) citizens – partisan and non-partisan alike – because no one else, including partisan pollsters and blogger ideologues, seems to care about hearing the voice of *all* South Carolinians.”
Ah, those pesky “blogger ideologues …”
Banner via Winthrop.edu