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No one questions the brilliance of national political pollster Robert Cahaly – especially when it comes to South Carolina races. Known as the “Oracle,” he has demonstrated time and again his ability to accurately – some would say prophetically – call the outcome of elections all over the country.
Cahaly visited our studios just prior to the 2024 election to offer his thoughts on the upcoming contest – and, as usual, his insights were spot on.
Accordingly, I was shocked to see the curious and unexpected results of his first survey on the 2026 South Carolina governor’s race – which is off to an earlier-than-expected start thanks to a high-profile battle between S.C. first district congresswoman Nancy Mace and fourth-term S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson.
Or rather Maces’s ongoing blitzkrieg against Wilson… whom she alleges has been weak in prosecuting human trafficking cases as well as violent crimes against women.
Including her…
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An afterthought in the gubernatorial debate up to this point? S.C. lieutenant governor Pamela Evette – although as we reported yesterday, the 57-year-old Ohio native may have the inside track on the most coveted endorsement in any GOP primary anywhere in America.
Still, the only polls I’ve seen on the 2026 race so far have shown Mace and Wilson well ahead of Evette – whose candidacy was mired in single digits. Granted, no one has shared any survey results related to the race with me in several weeks, but in the words of one Palmetto pollster all of the data showed Evette was “basically nowhere.”
That changed – dramatically – on Tuesday morning (March 11, 2025) when Cahaly dropped his first poll of the 2026 election cycle in South Carolina. Its top line shocker? Evette.
According to the survey (.pdf), a whopping 31.5% of GOP primary voters backed the lieutenant governor’s candidacy, compared to 29.1% who support Mace and 27.9% who support Wilson. U.S. congressman Ralph Norman was fourth with 11.5% support.
To be clear, that number is nearly three times the highest level of support Evette has garnered in any internal poll I’ve been shown.
Mace, not surprisingly, was having none of the results.
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“Lol,” she responded on X. “Has (Evette) gotten above 10 in any poll?”
Mace also questioned Cahaly’s performance in polling her prior GOP primary races.
“Same pollster had Arrington beating me, too,” she wrote, referring to her defeat of Trump-backed challenger Katie Arrington in 2020.
Mace wasn’t the only one responding incredulously to the survey results.
“First time I’ve ever seen someone outperform their own name ID on a ballot test,” noted veteran Palmetto political operative Kurt Pickhardt.
As I noted on FITSNews’ X account, “if this wasn’t a Robert Cahaly poll” its results would be laughable. But it is a Cahaly poll, so they have to be taken seriously.
According to Cahaly, his survey of “likely Republican voters” in South Carolina was conducted between March 8-10, 2025. Its margin of error is plus or minus 2.9%.
Needless to say, we will await additional public data on this race to see if this survey is in line with other results or, as I suspect will be the case, is an outlier. Perhaps one of the more significant outliers of Cahaly’s venerable career.
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THE POLL…
(The Trafalgar Group)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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1 comment
Why the surprise? Evette isn’t running her mouth, has taken no seriously controversial positions (and really, where does she stand on anything?) and has managed to avoid taking any real missteps.
On the other hand, fairly or not, Wilson has been targeted loudly by Mace for a number of “alleged” failures. And that brings us to Nancy who has never seen a camera she won’t jump in front of and who never shuts up – she could have become a serious force but has chosen to just become a conservative version of AOC.