New CLEMSON poll has Trump up by 9 points…

Clemson has come out with their latest poll for the Palmetto state showing Donald Trump up by 9 points over Ted Cruz:

clemson_poll

But you should notice somewhat interesting in these results. 13% are still undecided and while that likely won’t all go to one candidate, it could be enough to make this race much much tighter than it is going into the actual election. Or it could be so widely distributed that it has little impact on the election.

Clemson is predicting that Trump will win South Carolina:

For the first time in the history of the Palmetto Poll, which dates back to the presidential primary of 1988, we predict that the winner of our first poll in the fall of 2015 (October 27th) will win the statewide GOP primary on February 20, 2016. In the fall Palmetto Poll, Donald Trump led the 15 candidates with 23 percent of the respondents’ support. Even though slightly more than half of the respondents then said they were undecided about their choice, enough made up their minds now to keep Trump in the lead.

The race for second and fourth seems tight and indicative of the closeness of the contest nationally.

The Trump lead has been strong through this whole primary contest. While national polls show the leader with a lead as high as 35%, our sample of Republican voters who voted in 2 of the past 3 state primary elections shows that even these traditional voters support the candidacy of Mr. Trump. Despite criticism of his behavior onstage at the GOP presidential debate on Saturday, February 13th, the Trump lead has remained steady.

And here’s the lowdown for the post-debate poll:

Our sample size this time was 650 respondents, from respondents who voted in previous statewide primaries. We estimate the confidence level to be plus or minus 3 percent of the listed figure. Our sample required respondents who had voted in 2 of the past 3 state primary elections to be eligible for inclusion. Slightly less than 10 percent of the calls were to cell phones.


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