Tim Scott's Momentum Stalls After GOP Debate: Polls

On the eve of his formal entry into the Republican field for president, advisers for South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott held a call with reporters laying out a pathway to victory.

Acknowledging his low standing in national polls, his advisers described plans to focus the brunt of his campaign's attention on a retail-heavy approach to states like New Hampshire and Iowa, hoping to leverage his optimistic messaging and personable demeanor into strong early primary performances that would translate to national support. He also had millions of dollars to do it, with Scott—a pragmatist on Capitol Hill—quickly becoming an early favorite of a Washington, D.C., donor class that had grown tired of the pugilistic politics of top candidates Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

After an opportunity for Scott to share his message to the entire country for the first time on the Republican debate stage in Milwaukee last week, however, it appears most of the Republican Primary field remains unconvinced by what they saw.

While a Reuters-Ipsos poll August 25 showed few believed Scott—who spoke third-least among the major candidates to make the debate stage, according to a New York Times analysis—performed poorly, few believed he performed particularly well either following a performance marred by a series of formulaic responses that failed to capture his characteristic charismatic streak.

"More than a few people in America nodded off during his canned answers," David B. Cohen, professor of political science at the University of Akron in Ohio, previously told Newsweek in an interview after the debate.

And while Trump's decision not to appear in the debate resulted in a six-point decline among Republican voters nationally in Emerson College polling after the debate, Scott failed to win over many of them, with more viewers of the GOP debate believing vocal Trump critic Chris Christie "won" the debate than Scott did.

Other polls demonstrate a similar trend.

Post-debate poll after post-debate poll analyzed by Newsweek shows Scott seeing very little movement in his standing among likely GOP voters at both the state and national level, showing the enthusiasm that fueled donors' hopes might not necessarily be shared by the rest of the country.

In internal polls released by upstart candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's pollster on August 27, Scott now ranks in polling behind figures like Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence who are considered pariahs among Trump loyalists.

And in a poll published by pollster Insider Advantage after the debate, Scott was among a handful of candidates whose debate performance resulted in zero gain in the polls while figures like Haley—who spoke only slightly more than Scott—saw as much as a six-point bump from the organization's previous poll of the Republican field just five days earlier.

But Scott, despite his high favorability ratings within the party nationally, has also failed to gain ground in the places he is popular.

In addition to his anemic performances in state-level polls of Iowa and New Hampshire, an August 29 poll by Roanoke College showed approximately 14 percent of Republican voters in one of his best states, Virginia, support someone who is not even running for president: Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Scott, meanwhile, polled at just 8 percent.

Newsweek has reached out to the Scott campaign via email for comment.

The campaign is far from over, however.

Prior to the debate, polling by the conservative pollster Trafalgar had Scott neck-and-neck with DeSantis in Scott's home state of South Carolina at 14 percent, putting him in a solid position for second place in the early primary state. Meanwhile his super PAC—with $21 million in cash-on-hand—remains among the best-funded among all other candidates in the race.

Polling prior to the debate by Fox Business and the Daily Mail also showed Scott gaining momentum in the early primary states, while internal polling by the DeSantis campaign and others showed Scott at double digits in Iowa.

And unlike Trump, who has been forced to liquidate his campaign's coffers to cover the legal bills from four ongoing criminal cases, Scott is not currently facing criminal charges.

Correction 08/29/23 6:49 p.m. ET: This article's headline has been updated to more accurately reflect perceptions of Scott's performance at the GOP debate. Additional context was added.