Once more we take you inside the crosstabs of Rasmusen's latest poll. This time for the GOP South Carolina primary.
Big news items: Romney has matched Huckabee in a conservative Christian stronghold where pundits always said he would lose. The secondary story is the continued collapse of Rudy along with the Thompson freefall.

Topline numbers: Rudy loses a point since the beginning of September (this is his second lowest number in any SC) poll. The other news: Thompson losing six. Huckabee loses two and Romney gains five. McCain gets a three point bounce. (Note, I calculate a standard deviation of 6.6% for SC Rasmussen polls this year so the most significant number is the Thompson decline).

• Romney made huge gains in the 18-29 crowd with a whopping 19% increase in the young age bracket. (Again, I should point out that this number, like the Iowa internals, are way out of bounds but they're interesting nonetheless). Where did they come from? The 35% unsure mark at the beginning of December went down to 15%. The upstarts are finally making up their mind.
  
  
• Thompson dropped like a rock among voters age 30-39 losing 30% points over two weeks according to this Rass. poll. (Again, this is an outlier but I have to note it as something that stands out). Meanwhile Huckabee gained 14% of these folks to his camp. Conversely though, Huck lost 14% of the 50-64 crowd (from 32% down to 18%).
  
  
• Romney and Huckabee each took home 24% of the "Conservative" leaning GOPers while Thompson lost 7% of this demo, down to 12% from 19% two weeks ago.
  
  
• If you're wondering, no dramatic loses for Rudy... rather, just a steady decline by small percentage points across the board. His only gains were among "Liberal" leaning GOP primary goers and the 40-49 demo (9% increases in each demo).
  
  
• Speaking of political leanings. Thompson lost 22% from liberal leaning GOPers. (Note, this is probably a small sample of the overall group of people polled so no biggie). Interestingly enough, Rudy garners 75% of the "don't know" crowd when it comes to political leanings.
  
  
• Family stat notables. Romney is catching up with Huckabee among married voters but Huckabee leads in the "voters with kids" demo.
  
  
• Income brackets. Thompson tanks in almost each wealth demo across the board (losing an average 10% in each bracket). Romney catches Huck for the lower income bracket (23% each).
  
  
• Huckabee has a solid lock on the Evangelical vote with Thompson coming in second. (Huckabee: 42%; Thompson 14%; Romney 12%; Undecided 11%). But Romney now leads among SC Protestants and dominates among Catholics (34% to Rudy's 13%). Romney also leads the "Other" category of religion.
  
  
• As far as vote change probability goes... Romney and Huckabee actually lead the pack with 60% and 51% of those polled indicating that their vote might change. I think this readily reflects the tenuous nature of the voting pack altogether. Looking at the other state polls we find the same thing with Rudy or whoever the top two folks are. People are still really uncertain about where this is going and who they support.
  
  
• Finally, on the issues. Romney wins the on "Economy" and "Immigration" while Huck takes "National Security" and ties on the "War in Iraq". Huck lost serious ground on both the Economy and Immigration demo. Huck actually lost 16% points on the "War in Iraq" and is now in a 5 way tie. I also should note the McCain is picking up some slow steam across the board but most notably on issues of "National Security"

To sum up it...

> Romney's hard hitting challenges on Huckabee's conservative record may be capping Huck's sudden burst on the scene.
> Rudy keeps sliding but Thompson is an a relative freefall.
> Huckabee still dominates the middle-aged evangelical base but Mitt is cleaning up the younger crowd and the other religious demos.
> People are still wary of the top choices across the board.

Labels: poll, polling, rasmussen, south carolina