New SC poll
A new poll taken in South Carolina for GOP Presidential candidates shows McCain leading with 29%, Giuliani in second with 20%, and Gingrich 3rd with 14%. Romney garnered 6%, Brownback only 2%. Tancredo, Hunter and Huckabee all also garnered 1-2%. There was an increase in the number of undecided voters to 23%.
This shows that for the state of SC, McCain continues to be the frontrunner, but his support has decreased from the 35% he garnered in the last SC poll. At the same time, Giuliani also did significantly worse. Gingrich's numbers are virtually identical to the 15% he garnered last time in a SC poll, and he is not even running yet. While all three can be considered "winners" in this poll, I am most surprised at Gingrich continuing to poll so highly despite not having yet declared his candidacy. Romney went up 1 point, but at 6%, this poll is bad news for him. Of course, he still was the winner of the CPAC national poll, so his camp can just say that though they are unlikely to win SC, they have a slight improvement there and remain the national frontrunner. Brownback's 2% was one of the biggest surprises. Given recent polls and his past performance in SC, this is bad news for him. The biggest loser of this poll was Duncan Hunter, who in December, was virtually neck and neck with McCain and Giuliani in a SC poll, now down to 2%.
The huge leap in undecideds show that more people are having trouble finding someone they like. Usually over a campaign season, the number of undecideds will generally go down. The opposite holds here and there are two possible reasons. One, the first theory is that the first SC poll was taken of a group more politically informed, of delegates. In that case that poll might be more representative if everyone had equal name recognition, which they don't. This would account for the greater disparities between the leaders in this poll, who, with the exception of Romney who was in single digits, were also the leaders in way of name recognition. The second theory is that people are hearing some things they don't like about candidates they previously liked. This would move more people into the undecided camp and would account for McCain and Giuliani's slight drops in particular.
The undecided 23% may be the biggest untold story. Who and what those 23% are looking for is unclear from these numbers, but the answer to that question is the most important piece of the puzzle.
