Norman Leads By 9 On the Eve of South Carolina 5th District Special Election
National politics remain highly polarized, and that division is reflected in the race for South Carolina’s 5th congressional district, which will be decided Tuesday. A survey conducted by Change Research of respondents in South Carolina’s 5th District, however, shows there’s one issue that most American voters agree on: the AHCA leaves a lot to be desired.
Our poll of 1001 adults in the district found Republican Ralph Norman with a 9-point lead heading into the contest, with voters sharply divided along party lines on the issues of Russia and Trump’s job performance. The GOP’s American Health Care Act, on the other hand, has few big fans, even in the Republican party. Democrats are angry about what they see coming out of Washington, and are enthused about voting Tuesday — but there aren’t enough of them in this heavily Republican district to give their candidate the edge in our poll.
We polled 1001 adults in South Carolina’s 5th congressional district between Wednesday and Sunday. Our data show that Republican Ralph Norman is ahead by 9 points, making him the favorite to win the House seat previously held by Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. If he’s elected, however, Norman will face some tough political terrain, as the GOP’s American Health Care Act is quite unpopular in the district — and not just among Democrats.
In Tuesday’s race, Norman, a Republican who has served in South Carolina’s House of Representatives, holds a 53–44 lead over Democrat Archie Parnell, with Libertarian candidate Victor Kocher taking 3% of the vote. Though Norman’s lead is solid, it is nowhere near as comfortable as Republican Mick Mulvaney’s 21-point winning margin in the district last November. A political newbie, Parnell’s success in the polls is largely thanks to Democratic enthusiasm: while 61% of registered Democrats say they’ll definitely vote on Tuesday, only 49% of Republicans say the same.
Parnell’s supporters look similar to those that tend to support Democratic candidates: young voters, women, and African Americans prefer him to Norman by significant margins. Norman takes the other end of the electorate, with a base that is predominantly older, white, and male.
SC-05 Voters Concerned About the AHCA
We did see some unusual breakdowns in one area, and that’s attitudes toward the GOP health care plan, the AHCA. Overall, just 5% of our respondents think this is a good bill that they’d be excited to see enacted. Another 26% think the AHCA is not great, but still prefer it to the existing system. However, 41% of respondents–representing 57% of those who had an opinion on the bill–think it is awful and want it to be thrown away.
Democrats are almost unanimous in their hatred of the bill, independents are strongly opposed to it, and even among Republicans, there is more ambivalence than excitement. Only 9% of Republicans are excited for AHCA to become law, while another 9% think it’s a bad bill, and 43% think that AHCA is better than the current system, but is still not a great solution. These GOP numbers aren’t far off from a Quinnipiac poll from last month, which found that 48% of Republicans nationwide supported AHCA and 16% opposed it.
Voters Remain Sharply Polarized on Russian Interference
When it comes to the FBI’s investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, there’s more traditional polarization by party, but with a few interesting numbers. A full 73% of Republicans believe the entire thing is a liberal conspiracy, but 24% do have some concerns, and believe we should wait for all the facts to come out.
Surprisingly, 40% of independents also believe it’s a liberal conspiracy. These findings correlate strongly to where independents get their news. Half of the independents who believe the Russia story is a liberal conspiracy report that most of their news comes from Fox News or Breitbart. However, among independents who say they have at least some concern about Russia, only 4% report getting their news from those two sources.
A bare majority of Democrats, 53%, think that Trump should be impeached, and basically all Democrats have at least some concern.
Voters Split Down Party Lines
Voters feel intense and polarized about the President’s performance: 28% of voters give him a rating of 1 out of 10, while 15% give him a perfect score. Voters’ Trump rating correlates very strongly with their plans for Tuesday: not a single respondent who gave Trump a score of 5 out of 10 or higher said they were definitely voting for Parnell, while Trump haters are similarly cold on Norman.
Poll Details
The poll was conducted online among residents of South Carolina’s 5th congressional district, from June 14–18. 1001 adults were surveyed. Unregistered respondents were excluded from the ultimate sample. Post stratification was performed on age, race, gender, party plus 2016 presidential vote.
Using traditional calculations, the margin of error is plus or minus three points. We don’t think that way of calculating errors makes sense, and we’ll be publishing more on that in the future.
About Change Research
Change Research is led by two veteran data scientists and a longtime political and communications leader. Change Research empowers candidates and causes to better serve their constituents with sophisticated polling technology, dramatically increasing the sample size and accuracy of online surveys while slashing costs. Change Research brings powerful polling techniques within reach of all candidates regardless of their budget and technical expertise.
Contact: info@changeresearch.org
