Poll: GOP Sen. Tim Scott utterly botched his presidential campaign rollout

• GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina declared he's running for president.
• Morning Consult polling found that more Republicans heard nothing about the launch than heard positive things about it.
• It didn't help that the press mostly focused on a virginity pledge the unmarried senator said he made decades ago. 

A poll analysis from Morning Consult found that the presidential campaign rollout of South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott failed to make a substantial impact upon launch two weeks ago. 

In the week following the announcement, just 38% of GOP primary voters heard something positive about the candidate. That figure, however, does beat the 7% who heard something negative, but nevertheless is dwarfed by the 56% of GOP primary reporters who said they heard nothing whatsoever about Scott the week he announced. 

By comparison, Morning Consult found that 47% of GOP primary voters heard something positive about former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley after her launch, while 51% of voters heard something positive about former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis following their announcements.

All of those figures were significantly higher than the respective percentages that heard nothing.

Generally, campaigns prefer that a launch generates at least some press. Cutting through a dense news landscape is difficult, and that kind of milestone is one of the rare opportunities to secure a news cycle.

Scott's campaign, however, lost control of that news cycle when early stories focused on the virginity pledge the unmarried senator made in the early- to mid-1990s.

The data comes from a poll conducted May 24 to 27 among 738 registered Republican voters. It compared Scott's week-after data to the comparable weeks of his GOP rivals. 

While a botched launch is survivable, and polling is inherently volatile when you're talking about candidates this early in the cycle, there are some real ramifications to not hitting the marks.

The Republican National Committee has set certain thresholds that candidates must meet in order to qualify for a place on the debate stage come August. Candidates need 40,000 unique donors and have to receive at least 1% support in three national polls, or at least 1% support in two national polls and two early state polls. 

Scott should be able to hit those marks — he's a senator with a substantial donor list that can be shaken out over the next several months, and he's averaging about 2% in polls right now, according to the most recent FiveThirtyEight polling average.

But if 2020 and 2016 are any precedent those thresholds will rise, and there will only be more Republicans declaring their candidacy that can eat into his meager vote share. So that flopped rollout could come back to bite him.