Some fascinating number have just been put out by Public Policy Polling:
PPP’s newest poll on the special election in South Carolina finds Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch expanding her lead to 9 points over Mark Sanford at 50/41. Green Party candidate Eugene Platt polls at 3%.
Colbert Busch’s lead is on the rise for several reasons. She has a 51/35 advantage with independents. She’s winning over 19% of Republicans, while losing just 7% of Democrats. And it also seems that after last week’s revelations about Sanford that a lot of GOP voters are planning to just stay at home- while the district supported Mitt Romney by 18 points last fall, those planning to turn out for the special election voted for him by only a 5 point spread.
Sanford continues to be unpopular in the district with 38% of voters rating him favorably to 56% with a negative opinion. 51% say the revelations about his trespassing last week give them doubts about his fitness for public office. Interestingly the events of the last week haven’t hurt Sanford too much with Republicans though- 65% say the trespassing charges don’t give them any doubts about him, and his favorability with GOP voters has actually improved from 55/39 a month ago to now 61/32…
Before, the difference was within the margin of error. Now, if this poll is indicative, Elizabeth Colbert Busch has a real and perhaps expanding lead.
Earlier, Gina Smith (whom you will recall as the reporter who caught Sanford getting off the flight from Argentina, back when she was with The State), had raised the question, “Will Republican women stay home on Election Day after Sanford trespass charge?” Perhaps this new poll helps answer that question…
Except… wait a minute… in this poll, there is no gender gap. The Democrat is favored by 51 percent of women, and 49 percent of men (the margin of error for the full sample is 3.5 percent). And the exact same percentage of both men and women — 41 percent — support Sanford.
So much for this being about what women think of him…
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PPP generally has Democratic biast so the actual lead is probably around 1-2 points. Still, that’s amazing given the Republican nature of this district. I’m not ready to declare Colbert-Busch the favorite just yet but there are plenty of signs that she has a real shot.
Hyphenated Jailbird Hollywood liberal Colbert-Busch? No way.
It looks like Scott will be retiring for the second time come May 1. Why not immediately?
Here’s the post about Chief Scott’s resignation…
I doubt this polls accuracy given the partisan makeup of the district and as Ann Coulter put it, “Republicans could nominate Hitler and win South Carolina’s 1st district.”
Yeah, the demographics — and reapportionment — militate against the Democrat having any kind of a shot. I’m doubtful of the finding that Republicans will stay home. We’ve still got a couple of weeks to the election; all that matters is what happens that day.
Lots of Republicans can stay home and Sanford still wins…
Just read the ad Sanford put in the Post and Courier this weekend. Boy only Sanford could start an ad with “Its been a rough week…”, spend the whole ad talking about his own personal predicament, while never mentioning the attack in Boston, the explosion in Texas, or the ricin incident in DC.
Boy he must have been taking lesson from Haley in his free time since leaving Columbia, because the ad sounds like it was written by someone with a real victim complex. “Oh look at how mean the Democrats are for running ads against me.” Whaa whaa Boohoo