Plurality of GOP primary voters blame Biden for grocery costs, Trump for gas prices
The first Emerson College Polling/Nexstar Media South Carolina poll following the filing deadline for the special U.S. Senate Primary Election finds 22% support Ralph Norman, 19% Darline Graham, 12% Russell Fry, and 11% Mark Sanford. A quarter are undecided ahead of the August 11 election.
Voters under 50 break for Norman at 24%, along with those in their 50s at 25%. Graham’s support is highest among voters over 70, at 30%, while 16% of this group support Norman.
A majority of voters (53%) say Trump’s endorsement of Graham makes no impact on their vote, while 29% say it makes them more likely to support them, and 18% less likely.
A majority of special election voters (60%) think the economy is the issue the next Senator of South Carolina should focus on, followed by immigration (19%), healthcare (8%), and foreign policy (4%).
A plurality (42%) of Republican special election voters think former President Biden is most responsible for the price of groceries, followed by corporations (19%), President Trump (18%), and US Congress (13%). When it comes to the price of gas, 32% blame President Trump, 27% President Biden, 20% corporations, and 8% US Congress.
Eighty-eight percent of Republican special election voters think it is important that candidates running for Senate participate in a debate prior to the special election, while 12% find it not important.
Republican special election voters support US military action in Iran, 73% to 20%, while 8% are neutral.
Methodology
The Emerson College Polling South Carolina survey was conducted July 28-29, 2026. The sample of likely GOP Primary voters, n=500, has a margin of error (MOE), of +/- 4.3 percent. The data sets were weighted by gender, education, age, and region based on U.S. Census parameters and voter file data.
In the Republican Primary, data was collected by contacting registered voters from a voter file provided by Aristotle using MMS text-to-web and a probability-based panel of voters provided by Consensus Strategies using MMS text-to-web. The survey was hosted on QuestionPro and conducted in English.
It is important to remember that subsets based on demographics, such as gender, age, education, and race/ethnicity, carry with them higher credibility intervals, as the sample size is reduced. Survey results should be understood within the poll’s range of scores, and with a confidence interval of 95% a poll will fall outside the range of scores 1 in 20 times.
All questions asked in this survey with exact wording and order, along with full results, demographics, and cross tabulations can be found below. The survey was sponsored by Nexstar Media.
