Huckleberry’s in the doghouse – Digby's Hullabaloo

South Carolina’s 2020 U.S. Senate race is neck-and-neck with just three months to go until Election Day, as Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison’s well-funded campaign appears to have significantly narrowed the gap against Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham, according to a new poll released Tuesday.
Graham led Harrison by just a single percentage point, 44 percent to 43 percent, in the poll conducted by data intelligence firm Morning Consult, well within the survey’s 3.5-point margin of error.
Republican President Donald Trump, by comparison, holds a five-point lead in the historically red state over Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, 49 percent to 44 percent — though Morning Consult’s tracking data shows Trump’s margin has shrunk from around 15 percent in early June.
The survey of 750 likely voters in South Carolina, which was conducted online from July 24 to Aug. 2, offers one of the first snapshots of the Palmetto State races from a nonpartisan, independent pollster, appearing to confirm Democratic claims that the contests are growing tighter.
The discrepancy between Trump and Graham’s numbers can largely be attributed to independent and Republican-identifying voters.
While Trump had support from 46 percent of independents and 92 percent of Republicans, Graham only garnered 41 percent and 81 percent from those two groups, respectively.
More Republican voters — a total of 13 percent — said they either didn’t know who they would vote for or would vote for “someone else” in the Senate race compared to the presidential, where that number was just 4 percent.

Though Graham has become one of Trump’s most loyal congressional allies in recent years, he has previously battled skepticism from some Republican voters who felt he was insufficiently conservative due to his willingness to strike compromises with Democrats on issues like immigration and his criticism of Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Graham won his Republican primary in June with 68 percent of the vote over three little-known challengers. There will be Libertarian Party and Constitution Party candidates on the ballot in November, a factor Harrison has cited as a potential draw for Republican voters to split their tickets.

No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race in South Carolina since 1998. Trump defeated 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 14 percentage points in the state.

It looks like being the world’s most energetic Trump bootlicker hasn’t helped Graham all that much. But then Trump beat Clinton by 14 points and is only ahead by 5 so maybe that isn’t the smart strategy he thought it was.

Graham is still favored to win, ofcourse. It’s South Carolina. But you never know … this is a very weird year.