Warmongering Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham could lose his safe red seat to a Democratic doctor who was in the eighth grade when Graham was first elected, according to a damning new poll.
Fresh data obtained by the Daily Beast puts the 70-year-old South Carolina senator almost neck-and-neck with Democratic nominee Dr. Annie Andrews, making him the latest Republican to spark fears of an anti-Trump “blue wave” at the midterm elections.
The Impact Research poll shows Graham only three points ahead, 48-45, and with an approval rating of just 40 percent.
“Lindsey Graham has been in politics since I was in the eighth grade, and people are sick of these career politicians,” Andrews told the Daily Beast, insisting the MAGA senator had alienated many voters with his thirst for war, cuts to Medicaid, and long tenure in Washington.
“Casual observers are pretty disgusted by Lindsey Graham’s behavior; imagine how South Carolinians feel. That’s exactly what this poll reflects.”
Andrews is a 45-year-old pediatrician and mother of three who is running an “America First” campaign designed to flip the script in a longstanding GOP stronghold by focusing on affordability, healthcare, and “Washington dysfunction.”
Graham, meanwhile, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994 and subsequently to the U.S. Senate in 2002. But the last time he contested South Carolina was in 2020—the same year Trump was also on the ballot running for the White House, unlike this year.
“2020 was just a different era in American politics,” Andrews said, “and there’s a lot of things Lindsey Graham has done since 2020 that have really alienated those center-right Republicans and those independent voters who may have previously supported him.”
As the Iran war intensified in March, for instance, the senator faced a MAGA backlash after declaring on Fox News that he would ask South Carolinians to send their sons and daughters to fight and perhaps die in Iran.
“I go back to South Carolina, I’m asking them to send their sons and daughters over to the Mideast,” the Republican told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Graham, who has no children, added, “To our friends in Saudi Arabia, I am willing to do a treaty to go to war for you.”
“NO BOOTS on the ground,” Anna Paulina Luna wrote on X at the time. “If Senator Graham wants to go fight in a foreign conflict, let him be the first to volunteer.”
“What in the world would possess anyone to say this?” added then-GOP South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace.
Andrews, meanwhile, recounted meeting a lifelong Republican mother after the Senator’s appearance on Fox.
“She said, ‘I just have to tell you, I have been a Republican my entire life. I have an 18-year-old son, and what Lindsay said about sending him to war means that I’m going to do everything I can to help you get elected,’” the Democrat said.
The Daily Beast has reached out the Graham about the latest poll. The MAGA Senator spent millions during his campaign to secure his nomination at the GOP primaries even after Trump endorsed him.
But he isn’t the only Republican setting off alarm bells as they seek to fend off a Democratic blue wave in a traditionally safe GOP seat.
An internal poll conducted in Arizona’s second congressional district last week, for example, showed Democrat Jonathan Nez closing in on GOP Rep. Eli Crane in the district Trump won by 15 points in 2024.
In upstate New York, internal polling shared first with Politico also showed Democratic candidate Blake Gendebien trailing Trump-backed candidate Anthony Constantino by just one point in the race to replace GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik.
Stefanik won her re-election in New York’s 21st congressional district by 24 points less than two years ago.
South Carolina was expected to be deeply challenging for Democrats, who haven’t elected a member to the Senate in nearly three decades.
But the poll, based on 700 likely general election voters, shows Graham remains deeply underwater with just a 37 percent favorable rating and 57 percent unfavorable, while his job approval stands at 40 percent approve and 55 percent disapprove.
Asked if the poll was simply an outlier, Andrews replied: “No.”
“There’s a lot of Donald Trump supporters in South Carolina who will only get out and vote if Donald Trump is on the ballot, and Lindsey Graham is not going to have that luxury this time,” she said.
“We are running a South Carolina First campaign, an America First campaign, and to me this really isn’t just about flipping the Senate seat blue, it’s about returning the Senate seat to the people of South Carolina.”
