No, Donald Trump Didn’t Outperform Polls In South Carolina

Businessman Donald Trump won the South Carolina primary Saturday night, but on Sunday morning he exaggerated the significance of that win.

On MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," Trump said it was amazing to win by such a big margin -- 10 points -- and claimed that he won more support than the polls indicated he would.

The New York Times also reported late Saturday night that Trump outperformed final polls. The problem with that claim? HuffPost Pollster’s polling average put Trump’s support at 33.9 percent, and he actually won 32.5 percent of the votes in South Carolina -- which is getting rounded up to 33 percent in many reports. If anything, Trump underperformed the polling average.

The RealClearPolitics polling average had Trump somewhat lower at 31.8 percent, but it’s a stretch to say that 32.5 percent is much more than 31.8.

The individual polls in the last week before the primary showed Trump’s support varying from a low of 27 percent to a high of 38 percent. He certainly outperformed anything below 30 percent in the election results, but that’s only four of 13 polls released in the week leading up to the primary. He underperformed just as many -- four of 13 polls showed him at or over 35 percent support.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the only candidate with a legitimate claim of outperforming the polls in South Carolina. He averaged 15.9 percent support according to HuffPost Pollster, although the polls conducted closest to the primary showed him surging into the range of his 22.5 percent finish in the voting.

Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.