An exit poll in South Carolina [is] being criticized after voters in Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and Spartanburg were asked a series of questions about race and slavery, WSPA reports. Voters were asked whether “blacks are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights”:

“It was designed to take advantage of a political moment of Senator Tim Scott's election as the first African-American from a southern state since reconstruction,” said [political science professor David Woodard]. “It was not designed to be provocative.” Woodard said the controversial statements mentioned in his polls were used by pollsters for decades and that's why he chose to include it. He was surprised by the reaction.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina Other questions asked, for example, whether blacks weren't hard enough workers. But it's all perfectly standard language, you see According to Woodard the poll was meant to show that race "has no bearing" on which candidates white voters will vote for, so I suppose peppering your poll with questions that anyone but a flag-toting klansman would immediately identify as reallyreallyracist would be a good way to signal to quiz takers that you're not supposed to answer the Bad thing.

Anyway, chalk it up as another thing that happened. As for what to make of it, you're on your own.

