Gallup calculates South Carolina as the seventh most conservative state in the union, with 45 percent of residents self-identifying as conservative.
But it’s the Republican candidates sporting more moderate hues who are performing best in the early goings of the 2016 presidential primary marathon there.
A new Palmetto poll by Clemson University finds former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush leading a hypothetical six-person field for the GOP nomination with 22 percent of the vote.
Trailing in second place is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who registers 10 percent.
The rest of the field lags in single digits.
A December survey of the Palmetto State primary field by Gravis Marketing found Mike Huckabee barely edging Bush, 18 percent to 17 percent. (Huckabee is a strong social conservative but is routinely blasted by the Club for Growth for his spending legacy as governor.)
The glaring difference is that the recent Palmetto poll by Clemson did not include Huckabee in its survey. Each pollster must make a gut call on which candidates to include or leave out, but there’s little science to use when attempting to gauge who might ultimately run. Additionally, the price of a poll can rise as more options are included.
Polling in the first in the south primary has been sparse and a large swath of the electorate is understandably undecided. To illustrate that fact, 48 percent of those surveyed in the recent Palmetto poll said they were undecided.
But there are still a couple of key take-aways from this data taken together.
First, geography still matters in South Carolina. Sure, name identification is important and both Bush and Huckabee have it. But it can’t be overlooked that both men governed southern states not far away.
Newt Gingrich, who represented neighboring Georgia in Congress, triumphed in the 2012 South Carolina primary over Mitt Romney. In 2008, Sen. John McCain was victorious, but he was helped by the fact that Huckabee and Fred Thompson, who had previously served as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee, split the vote.
Secondly, while South Carolina wields a conservative reputation, it also has a strong base of establishment Republicans.
Dive back into the Palmetto poll and it shows Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., cruising to a primary victory next Tuesday likely without having to endure a runoff.
Graham, a foreign policy hawk who has staked out more moderate stands on immigration policy and President Barack Obama’s judges, is ahead of his nearest primary foe by 40 points.
It’s why none of the 2016ers – even those hailing from the tea party wing – decided to align themselves with one of Graham’s right-leaning opponents.