Limited Support for Sanford Impeachment

South Carolina voters don't think much of Mark Sanford anymore. And a fair number of them want him to resign. But when it comes to the possibility of impeaching him there's little public support.

Sanford's approval rating is now just 36%, with 51% of voters disapproving of him. He still has a decent 50/34 spread with Republicans (making him more popular within the party than Lindsey Graham), but independents split against him 50/37 and Democrats do so by a 73/18 margin.

Voters are pretty evenly split on whether they'd like to see Sanford resign, with 45% supporting such a move and 47% opposed to it. Interestingly even 10% of people who approve of Sanford's job performance think he should choose to leave office. But 19% of those who disapprove of him think he should not resign.

Andre Bauer may have a lot to do with people who don't like Sanford but want him to remain in office. Polling data we'll release tomorrow on next year's race for Governor finds that Bauer's net favorability rating is even worse than Sanford's net approval rating, so voters in the state aren't exactly keen to see him become Governor. Indeed among those respondents who said they disapproved of Sanford but didn't want him to resign, 59% have an unfavorable opinion of Bauer to just 21% who see him favorably.

When it comes to the question of impeachment only 32% of voters are supportive with 58% in opposition. A slight majority of Democrats favor it (53/35) with stronger majorities of independents (60/27) and Republicans (75/17) opposed.

South Carolina voters don't like Sanford much any more, but they may like the continued negative national media spotlight that impeachment proceedings bring even less. That, combined with the unpopular possibility of Andre Bauer becoming Governor, has voters in the state supportive of Sanford serving out his term and presumably hoping that he will do so while attracting as little additional attention as possible.

Full results here