Mitch Perry
Donald Trump‘s endless summer of bliss at the polls continues to show no signs of dying out anytime soon.
Last week he took the lead in a Florida poll for the first time, and a new Gravis Marketing poll released Monday night has him with a huge lead in South Carolina, the first state in the South to vote in next year’s Republican primaries.
Trump has 34 percent in the new poll. That’s three times the lead over the next three candidates: retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson at 10.9 percent, Jeb Bush at 10.5 percent, and Scott Walker is fourth at 10.3 percent.
Previous polls taken in the Palmetto state had Bush and Walker enjoying frontrunner status, but that was before the Trump surge.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is in fifth place with 6 percent, followed by social conservative Mike Huckabee, with 5.5 percent. Home state U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is in seventh place, supported by only 4.9 percent of South Carolina voters.
Behind him is U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas (3.4 percent), Ohio Gov. John Kasich (3.3 percent), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (2.5 percent), former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (2.5 percent), and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (2.4 percent).
Rand Paul received only 1 percent.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders, 77 to 7 percent. Elizabeth Warren is at 6.3 percent, and Joe Biden 6.1 percent.
Trump is now the clear front-runner in New Hampshire, according to the latest WMUR Granite State Poll, also released Monday. Trump is the top choice of 24 percent of likely GOP primary voters, doubling the support of former Florida Governor Bush, who is backed by 12 percent. Wisconsin Governor Walker, at 11 percent, is the only other candidate in double digits.
The rest of the field ranks this way in New Hampshire: Christie (7 percent), Paul (7 percent), Kasich (6 percent), Cruz (5 percent), Carson (5 percent), Rubio (3 percent), Huckabee (2 percent), Bobby Jindal (2 percent), Perry (2 percent), Fiorina (1 percent), Graham (1 percent) and Rick Santorum (1 percent). All other potential candidates received less than 1 percent support, and 12 percent of those polled said they are undecided.
Gravis Marketing conducted a random survey of 1,019 registered voters for the South Carolina presidential poll. The sample includes 609 Republican primary participants and 209 Democraticprimary participants, with the remainder being non-primary participants who will vote in the 2016 General Election. The poll has a margin of error of ± 3 percent for the total sample, ± 4 percent for the Republican primary, and ± 6 percent for the Democratic primary.
WMUR Granite State Poll was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Seven hundred and twenty-two (722) randomly selected New Hampshire adults were interviewed by landline and cellular telephone between July 22 and July 30, 2015. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.6 percent. Included were 308 likely 2016 Republican primary voters (MSE = +/-5.6), 276 likely 2016 Democratic primary voters (MSE = +/-5.9), and 652 likely 2016 presidential election voters (MSE = +/- 3.8).
