Republican presidential contender Herman Cain has been battling allegations of sexual harrassment this week, but the scandal hasn’t hurt him in South Carolina where he’s taken a 10-point lead, according to Rasmussen Reports.
Cain is the choice of 33 percent of those surveyed by Rasmussen, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is second with 23 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is third at 15 percent. Those three are the only candidates with double-digit levels of support in the South Carolina GOP survey.
Cain and Romney were previously separated by only one point in an NBC survey of South Carolina GOP voters. Most of Cain’s support in the NBC survey came from among Tea Partiers, self-identified conservatives and evangelical Christians, while Romney’s backers tend to come from self-identified GOP moderates and liberals.
Rasmussen interviewed 770 likely Republican voters Monday and Tuesday of this week, which put their responses during the first two days following Politico’s publication Sunday of allegations that two women were paid five-figure settlements by the National Restaurant Association during Cain’s tenure as head of the group.
Cain has strenuously denied the allegations. The NRA has declined to comment on personnel issues. A lawyer for one of the women says she would like to come forward publicly but is precluded from doing so by a confidentiality provision of her settlement with the NRA.
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