New poll shows most South Carolinians move beyond Sanford

A new InsiderAdvantage/Statehouse Report poll shows 51 percent of registered voters in South Carolina want the General Assembly to stop wasting its time over Gov. Mark Sanford’s ethical lapses and get down to real work benefitting the state’s citizens.

“For the last six months, lawmakers have been caught up in what to do about Governor Sanford’s shenanigans,” said Statehouse Report publisher Andy Brack. “After six months of headlines, it’s pretty clear people are sick of it and want the legislature to start working on things like better jobs, better education and policies that make a difference in their lives.”

InsiderAdvantage Chairman and CEO Matt Towery said little had changed since the company first polled for Politico when the Sanford scandal broke in June.

“As counter-intuitive as it might seem, there is little to suggest there is any strong political will among South Carolina voters to remove the governor from office, or even to take punitive measures against him,” Towery said. “Much of the public just doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.”

Each of the randomly-selected 770 registered South Carolina voters were polled Dec. 15, the night before the S.C. House Judiciary Committee recommended that Sanford be censured for ethical issues and an extramarital affair. Respondents were asked which of five options best represented their view.

Other interesting results from the poll:
Democrats (36 percent) leaned more for Sanford to resign, while Republicans and Independents (59 percent and 60 percent, respectively) favored the legislature moving past Sanford.
Slightly more men than women (26 percent to 21 percent) wanted Sanford to resign.
A majority of respondents in three age groups (30-44, 45-64 and 65+) wanted the General Assembly to move beyond the Sanford issue, compared to 45 percent of voters aged 18 to 29. About a third in the younger group (35 percent) wanted Sanford to be impeached, compared to 8 percent to 13 percent of other aged voters.

About the poll
The poll was conducted for Statehouse Report by InsiderAdvantage on Dec. 15 among 770 randomly-selected registered voters in South Carolina. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percent. The data have been weighted for age, race, gender and political affiliation.
For more information, visit the new issue of StatehouseReport.com.
“InsiderAdvantage seeks alliances with the top political media in the South, and we feel we have struck gold with Statehouse Report,” said Towery. “Statehouse Report is unmatched in South Carolina for political insight and analysis, and for doing what we at InsiderAdvantage strive to do with our polling and strategic services – inform our clients, subscribers and associates of not only what has happened, but what is going to happen. That’s the value of insider political media, and Statehouse Report embodies that philosophy like no other in South Carolina,” said Towery.

About InsiderAdvantage
Atlanta-based InsiderAdvantage ( www.InsiderAdvantage.com) is a unique boutique firm of experts in the areas of research, strategy, media, business and government. The company’s polling and research analysis division has earned national accolades for its accuracy. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, named by Time Magazine as one of “The World’s Most Influential People,” cited InsiderAdvantage as one of the three most accurate pollsters in the 2008 presidential race. InsiderAdvantage polls also appear regularly on RealClearPolitics and Politico, and have been cited by a host of national media.

About Statehouse Report
Statehouse Report ( www.StatehouseReport.com) is South Carolina’s leading weekly policy and politics forecast. Through its focused legislative news coverage and commentary, Statehouse Report offers businesses and organizations with the behind-the-scenes information and analysis they need to keep a step ahead of what’s going to happen at the S.C. General Assembly and state government.