Donald Trump is poised to trounce Nikki Haley Saturday in her home state of South Carolina, an exclusive Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll finds, with a yawning advantage that hasn’t been diminished by the former president’s controversies or legal travails.
Among those very likely to vote in the state’s Republican primary, Trump leads Haley by close to 2-1, 63%-35%.
“The story of this poll is the depth of strength shown by Trump,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. The former president holds double-digit advantages among men and women, in every age group, and among both high school graduates and those with a college degree.
Haley has hoped for a strong showing in South Carolina, the state that twice elected her governor. But Paleologos notes that Trump’s lead is larger than his 19-point win in 2016 over Sen. Marco Rubio in his home state, Florida. (At the time, Trump wasn’t a resident of Florida, where he declared residency in 2019.)
The survey was taken Thursday through Sunday by landline and cellphone of 500 South Carolina voters who said they were “very likely” to vote in the primary or had already cast an early ballot. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide
Military families salute Trump
Trump created controversy this month when he mocked Haley’s husband, Michael Haley, a National Guardsman now on a yearlong deployment to Africa. “What happened to her husband? Where is he?” he asked suggestively at a rally in Conway, South Carolina. “He’s gone.”
Haley responded on social media: “Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about.”
Even so, Trump leads Haley among voters in military families 65%-33%, a bit wider than his standing among those who don’t have a member of the military in their family.
SC voters like Nikki Haley, but they like Donald Trump more
Though both Trump and Haley have net favorable ratings among primary voters, the former president is more popular (64%-25%) than the former governor(47%-36%).
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