Gravis Marketing has a new poll just out for South Carolina, with the best ever result from any pollster for Bernie Sanders in a South Carolina poll.
Methodological Issues with Gravis
Now, Gravis is not known for being a particularly good pollster — it is a robopoll company that apparently now makes some effort to correct for the fact that they do not poll cell phones by including a partial internet sample. Given its methodological problems, Gravis has tended to understate Sanders’ actual support:
- In Iowa, Gravis had Clinton up by 11 (53-42) shortly before the Caucuses.
- In New Hampshire, they actually were not off by quite so much (58% for Sanders to 42% for Clinton), but still overestimated Clinton’s support and underestimated Sanders.
- Gravis has also consistently placed Sanders' support lower than other pollsters in its national polls. Their most recent national poll from January had Clinton up 65-26, at a time when all other pollsters had Sanders in the mid to high 30s or low 40s.
SC Poll Result
With Gravis’ pro-Clinton house effect in mind, the result from Gravis for South Carolina is:
The highest Sanders has yet polled in South Carolina, from a pollster that typically has underestimated Sanders' support
Given the fact that Gravis has understated Sanders’ support in its other polls, this must be taken as an unexpectedly good result for Sanders.
In fact, this 41% is the best result for Sanders so far in any poll ever taken in South Carolina.
Of course, it still has Clinton up by 18 points, which would be a substantial win for her.
But the race was never supposed to be that close — especially in South Carolina, which should be one of Clinton’s strongest states.
Just a few months ago, Clinton was supposed to blow Sanders out in South Carolina by 30, 40, 50, or even 60 points.
But the trend, at least so far, has been consistently moving in one direction over time:
[note: HuffPo Pollster has not yet updated the chart to include this new poll, so this additional poll will make Sanders continue to go up further in the trend]
Going up...
