By The Daily Caller (U.S.) | Created at 2026-09-28 18:51:37 | Updated at 2026-09-29 03:48:27
10 hours ago
South Carolina GOP strategists are sounding alarm bells as a poll released Saturday by a Republican-leaning pollster delivered some tough news for the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s newly minted political dynasty.
Conducted by the Trafalgar Group between Sept. 23-25, the poll found that GOP Senate candidate Darline Graham only has a single-point advantage over her Democratic opponent, Annie Andrews, in a tight South Carolina race. Graham was hand-picked by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to succeed her brother after he passed away suddenly in July, and was later endorsed by President Donald Trump during the Senate primary in August. (RELATED: Who Is The Democrat Taking On Lindsey Graham’s Political Machine?)
Approximately 8 percent of voters said they were still undecided, and around 6 percent said they would pick another candidate besides Graham or Andrews.
The Trafalgar poll surveyed just over 1,000 likely general election voters, nearly 60 percent of whom identified as Republicans. The poll has a margin of error of approximately 2.9 percentage points.
One poll released earlier in September found that Graham had a two-point lead over Andrews. Another poll released in August and sponsored by Andrews’ campaign found the two candidates were locked in a tie.
FITSNews, a South Carolina politics website, published a report Monday detailing fears among Republican strategists and state conservative activists that Graham is heading toward an upset loss or, at best, an extremely narrow win.
“Throw in a Republican president who’s as popular with voters as Typhoid Mary, a Democratic base that ramped up into overdrive by their hatred of him, inflation and affordability problems that have hung around so long they’ve taken root, and cap it all off with a war with Iran where there’s no end in sight — nor for the inflated gas and diesel prices that go along with it — and you have the perfect storm for a nasty Election Day for Republicans in six weeks,” a Republican national strategist told the outlet.
“In the past, the party has been able to more or less wallpaper over these differences and keep moving forward,” the strategist said of the growing divide between the state’s center-right Republicans and hardline conservatives. “That approach seems to be running out of gas this time.” (RELATED: Trump Candidate Darline Graham Faceplates In Senate Debate)
“Their views on the current situation ranged from pessimistic (‘no matter how you cut it, we’re screwed’) to Pollyanna-ish (‘things are grim now; but they’ve been grim before and we survived’) to pragmatically fatalistic (‘we’ll make it through November; but each election cycle brings us that much closer to the coming showdown’),” the piece’s author, Mark Powell, wrote.
The outlet has also reported on a grassroots movement to convince Republican voters to write in Norman rather than voting for Graham— a sign that conservatives harbor deep animosity for the state’s party establishment.
“She was shoved down our throat,” former South Carolina treasurer Thomas Ravenel told FITSNews. “All we know is she was a career bureaucrat who pushed DEI policies at the state level.”
FITSNews noted that the GOP split may have had its origins in the South Carolina Republican Party’s attempt to coronate Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in the June gubernatorial primary. Evette lost to state Attorney General Alan Wilson, but the party’s repeated efforts to win her the nomination left many voters with a bad aftertaste, according to the outlet. (RELATED: Will South Carolina Enter A Post-Graham Era?)
“The SCGOP establishment spent a year ramming Pamela Evette down our throats,” a conservative political operative told the outlet. “Then, without stopping to catch their breath, they did the very same thing with Darline Graham in August. Now they snap their fingers and expect conservatives to fall in line and come running again. What are they smoking at state party headquarters? They need to wake up and realize those days are over.”
The Daily Caller contacted Trafalgar Group asking whether the poll was weighted to account for the higher number of respondents who identified as Republicans.
