South Carolina Polls: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Far Ahead — Can They Be Caught?
The 2016 presidential polls are really at the point now that they have much more relevance and truly mean something. It’s no longer just seeing what possible voters may say, but what the real voters are doing. There is only a little over a week until the South Carolina primary is held, and already, it looks as if it may be a landslide in both parties. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have hit the ground running without looking back.
The primary in South Carolina is not until Saturday, February 20, and anything can happen in that amount of time. Still, it’s truly hard to think that any other candidates in the GOP or Democratic Party can even begin to catch up to the two frontrunners.
According to the New York Daily News, Clinton has jumped out ahead in South Carolina and has a commanding lead over Bernie Sanders. In the caucuses in Iowa, she barely pulled out a victory at all, but that was before suffering a huge loss in New Hampshire.
As of early Thursday, Clinton’s lead over Sanders seemed insurmountable, as she was up on him 62 percent to 32.5 percent.
Even with an early commanding lead in the South Carolina polls, Hillary Clinton cannot afford to let up and back off. The Los Angeles Times reports that some may think it’s an uphill battle from this point for Bernie Sanders, but the New Hampshire results are very telling in Clinton’s campaign.
Many of the voters in New Hampshire believe that “honesty and trustworthiness” are the most important attributes that our next president should have. In the regard, it was Bernie Sanders who totally throttled Clinton and hardly anyone believed that she possessed those traits at all.
On the other side of things, the Republican Party is also seeing a gigantic deficit for virtually all of the candidates in the South Carolina polls.
As of Thursday, Donald Trump was leading the pack in the South Carolina polls with a support rating of 36 percent. His closest rival doesn’t even really come close to that number as Texas Senator Ted Cruz has 19.7 percent from voters in South Carolina.
Behind Cruz are Florida Senator Marco Rubio and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush with 12.7 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Rounding out the top five in the GOP is Ben Carson, who currently has 8.7 percent of support.
Donald Trump lost the Iowa caucus to Cruz, but it wasn’t by a giant margin. Cruz ended up winning over Trump by a little over 3 percent, with Marco Rubio just a little over 1 percent behind Trump and in third place.
As CNN reported, Donald Trump then destroyed his competition in the New Hampshire primary where he won with a vote of 35.3 percent. John Kasich came in second with 15.8 percent of the vote, and Ted Cruz landed in third with 11.7 percent.
After the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, there is not a huge different in the delegate votes in either party so far.
Republican
- Donald Trump – 17
- Ted Cruz – 11
- Marco Rubio – 10
Democrat
- Bernie Sanders – 36
- Hillary Clinton – 32
In the overall scheme of things, to win the Republican nomination, a candidate would need to win 1,237 delegates. To win the Democratic nomination, a candidate would need to win 2,382 delegates.
Currently, Hillary Clinton is far ahead of Bernie Sanders in Superdelegates even if he has an edge in pledged delegates.
The South Carolina polls are telling a lot right now, but the primary is just a little over a week away and there is plenty that can change by that time. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s current leads are quite shocking, and even though anything can happen, it’s hard to see those huge leads being taken away that much.
[Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]
