South Carolina's senior U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has the support of 45 percent of likely GOP primary voters, while none of his opponents rise above single digits, according to the February 2014
Winthrop Poll.
Graham gets about a third of his support from tea party-leaning Republicans. Of his opponents, Lee Bright of Spartanburg has the most solid tea party backing with almost 62 percent.
Other Republicans who came out well are Gov. Nikki Haley with a 78 percent approval rating, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott with an approval score of almost 73 percent.
The solidly red state's GOP voters gave President Barack Obama a 93 percent disapproval rating. Congress is no less poorly regarded, garnering a 90 percent disapproval score.
Former Sen. Jim DeMint, now head of the Heritage Foundation, received a 73 percent positive or somewhat positive rating.
The tea party gets a positive rating from 57 percent of the GOP voters, though most of those polled said they did not consider themselves to be members of the movement.
Demographically, most of the likely Republican voters are over 45 years of age, overwhelmingly white (95 percent), and Protestant, with a majority describing themselves as Evangelical.
Socially, 63 percent of those polled said it was unacceptable to have children out of wedlock.
The survey, which interviewed 901 likely Republican primary voters, was conducted from Feb. 16-23 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.
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