Exclusive: 2026 South Carolina Governor’s Poll Released

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South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson narrowly leads congresswoman Nancy Mace in a very fluid race for governor of the Palmetto State in 2026, according to a new survey released by Columbia-based First Tuesday Strategies.

Contrary to the results of an outlier poll released earlier this month which showed lieutenant governor Pamela Evette in the lead – the Ohio native trailed far behind Wilson and Mace in this survey.

Wilson was backed by 20.8% of respondents, according to the survey (.pdf) while Mace drew the support of 16.3%. Evette was a distant third with only 6.9% support – just ahead of fifth district congressman Ralph Norman (6.4%).

Two senatorial contenders – Josh Kimbrell and Sean Bennett – were backed by 1.8% and 1.6% of respondents, respectively.

Mace was clearly not impressed by the data – hinting that Wilson’s camp was behind the results.

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“Alan, please stop with the fake polls,” she wrote on X. “It’s not a good look.”

While noting Mace had “relatively high” unfavorable data amongst primary voters, First Tuesday’s analysis of the results termed Evette’s ballot support “shockingly low” given her 70% name identification among GOP primary voters. Wilson, conversely, has consistently drawn a much higher percentage of ballot support among the 88% of GOP primary voters who are familiar with him.

The biggest number on the board? Undecideds…

GOP primary voters who haven’t decided who they are backing currently comprise nearly half of the electorate at 46.6%.

Mace has polled as high as 32.8% on previous surveys, however the latest poll “asked the ballot question with further options… and asked if the respondent was undecided rather than voting for someone else,” according to First Tuesday’s analysis.

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RELATED | INSIDE PAMELA EVETTE’S BRAGGADOCIO

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Worth noting: Evette hasn’t polled higher than 12.5% in any of First Tuesday’s recent surveys – which were conducted in January, February and March of this year. That’s obviously well below the support she received in a survey released on March 11 by veteran national pollster Robert Cahaly.

First Tuesday is unaffiliated with any candidate in the 2026 race. The independent, out-of-state pollster used by the firm for this survey collected its latest data from a random sample of 500 likely primary voters between March 19-21, 2025. The survey’s margin of error is plus or minus 4.4%.

The GOP primary is the race to watch in South Carolina, where no Democrat has won a top-of-the-ticket statewide race this millennium. The last to do it? The late Fritz Hollings, who beat centrist GOP congressman Bob Inglis in 1998 to win his final term in the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, no Democrat has won a statewide election in South Carolina since 2006 – when Jim Rex defeated Karen Floyd in the race for state superintendent of education by a mere 455 votes.

Rex later bolted the Democratic party, incidentally.

Count on FITSNews to keep our audience in the loop whenever we receive fresh polling data on competitive races…

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THE POLL…

(FTS)

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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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