Winthrop Poll Finds S.C. Worried about the Economy
Observer Reports
As South Carolina moves to the end of spring, a quiet but pervasive economic malaise has settled over the state.
According to the latest soundings by the Winthrop Poll—a survey of 1,434 residents conducted by Winthrop University’s Center for Public Opinion & Policy Research—the mood of the electorate is decidedly overcast. Most of the state’s residents view the current economy with a jaundiced eye, and fully half report that their financial footing has slipped compared to where they stood a year ago.
The anxieties of the checkout aisle have, it seems, become an acute, everyday reality. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed described the task of paying for groceries as either difficult or very difficult. The fundamental pillars of middle-class stability are similarly teetering 59 percent reported struggling to meet the demands of housing, such as rent and mortgages, as well as healthcare and prescription medication costs.
The modest luxuries of leisure, once taken for granted, are increasingly viewed as artifacts of a bygone era. Going out to dinner is now deemed unaffordable by 61 percent of respondents, while the prospect of a week-long vacation has been relegated to the realm of fantasy for a striking 72 percent.
Beyond the pocketbook, the poll offers a nuanced portrait of a state continuously wrestling with its demographic and historical identity. The question of who exactly constitutes an American yielded a tiered consensus.
While an overwhelming 97 percent agreed across party lines that children born in the U.S. to native-born parents are citizens, and 84 percent extended that same recognition to the U.S.-born children of legal immigrants, the numbers declined sharply when considering the children of undocumented parents.
Just under half of the respondents—46 percent—expressed the belief that a tapestry of various races, ethnic groups, and nationalities inherently makes the United States a better place.
The fraught legacy of the South remains a matter of polite, and sometimes impolite, disagreement. When asked about the fate of Confederate monuments, residents split down the middle of a familiar divide: 31 percent preferred that the stone sentinels be left alone entirely, while 34 percent favored the addition of a plaque or marker to provide historical interpretation and context.
Amid the economic worries and cultural friction, a surprising and quiet consensus emerged around the necessity of the aesthetic. Nearly three-quarters of South Carolinians affirmed the enduring importance of arts and culture. Specifically, respondents expressed a strong devotion to ensuring that the arts—dance, media, music, theater, visual arts, and literature—remain a staple of the educational diet for elementary, middle, and high school students.
It is a telling detail: even as the grocery bills rise and the summer vacations vanish, the desire for a little poetry remains firmly rooted.
The Winthrop Poll, distributed online in April and May, utilizes a weighted sample of 1,434 respondents and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2.59 percentage points at the 9 percent confidence level.
