Tim Scott Has Some Rocket Fuel
Republican voters love him, he's climbing in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he has a near-bottomless bank account.
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Yesterday, a poll was released that asked New Hampshire Republicans who they want to be the GOP presidential nominee. The few news stories written about the survey all basically said the same thing: Trump is consolidating support, DeSantis is tanking, and none of the other candidates stand a chance.
But this narrative, which has been dominating coverage about the GOP primary for a good while now, misses something noteworthy in all the recent polling data: South Carolina Senator Tim Scott is doing really well. In the New Hampshire poll, Scott was at 7%, up from just 1% a month ago. For a man who launched his campaign just three and a half weeks ago, Scott’s performance so far in the primary has been genuinely impressive. Anybody just casually following the horserace might have missed this, considering how little coverage Scott’s campaign has gotten.
This post is meant to be a corrective to that lack of attention. I want to make the very basic point — since I haven’t really seen it made anywhere else — that Scott’s campaign has so far been very successful.
Consider:
Scott routinely polls in third in Iowa. Because Iowa is the first state to vote in the GOP primary, it has the potential to upend the media narrative about the race and give underdog candidates a much-needed boost heading into the rest of the primary states. In every recent survey of Iowa Republicans, Scott polled somewhere in the 5 to 7 percent range, trailing only Trump and DeSantis. This is especially impressive because he was in the 1 to 3 percent range just a few weeks ago before launching his campaign.
Scott has dramatically increased his support in New Hampshire, the second primary state. As mentioned above, Scott has jumped from 1% to 7% in the state in the course of a single month.
Scott has the highest favorable-to-unfavorable ratio of the entire GOP field among Republican voters. According to a YouGov poll released on Tuesday, 54% of Republicans view Scott favorably while only 9% view him unfavorably and 37% don’t know how they feel about him. That means there are six Republicans who approve of Scott for each one who disapproves. No other candidate has a favorable/unfavorable ratio as high as Scott’s (Trump: 4.9, DeSantis: 4.4, Ramaswamy: 3.7, Haley 2.6, Pence: 1.6, Christie: 0.6).
Scott has the founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, in his corner, who seems able and willing to spend effectively infinite amounts of money getting Scott’s name and message out. As Scott’s name ID continues to rise, it’s likely his poll numbers will too.
I’m going to keep this post short because I don’t have much else to say on the topic other than (1) Scott’s campaign is doing really well for being less than one month old (2) Scott’s impressive performance is not getting the attention from the media it deserves (3) I think that Scott has a bit of rocket fuel in him and wouldn’t be surprised if he starts to take off in a way that few pundits expect him to.
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And if you’re tired of the Trump drama, well, you can’t get further from Trump than Scott.