South Carolina Democrats Support The Progressive Agenda
By Ethan Winter
To better understand South Carolina’s Democratic electorate, we fielded a survey of 767 likely voters in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary. The survey was conducted from December 19 through December 29, 2019.
First, we look at court expansion. Democratic voters were asked the following: “Would you support or oppose the next Democratic President adding seats to the Supreme Court? Proponents say that this is necessary to restore balance by reducing the influence of a small number of ultra-conservative justices and that without this measure many positive reforms will be impossible to enact. Opponents say that this creates a dangerous standard and only further politicizes the court and that the intended effects will be short term as the Republicans will just add Justices next time a Republican is President. Do you support or oppose the next Democratic President adding seats to the Supreme Court?”
Among all Democrats, court expansion was supported by a 36 point margin with 61 percent of voters in favor and 25 percent opposed.
Both male and female Democrats are in favor of expanding the Supreme Court. We found that males Democrats are modestly more in favor (+40 margin) compared to females (+33 margin).
Support for the expansion of the Supreme Court is supported by Democrats of all age groups and Democrats 45 and older support it by a slightly higher margin than Democrats 44 and younger. Non-College educated Democrats support expanding the Supreme Court by 41 point margin while college-educated Democrats support the proposal by a 26 point margin. Black Democrats, meanwhile, support expanding the Supreme Court by a 46 point margin while white Democrats support the measure by a 21 point margin.
Next, we turn to look at support for the GND. Here, the question we asked was slightly different than the court expansion question. We were interested in whether or not Democratic voters were more or less likely to vote for a candidate based upon their support (or lack thereof) for a Green New Deal. We found by an overwhelming 77 point margin, Democrats were more likely to back a candidate who supports a Green New Deal.
Preference for a candidate who supports a Green New Deal was the majority position among both men and women, among all age groups, with both the college and non-college educated, and among black and white voters.
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is a Senior Advisor to Data for Progress.