The Civitas Institute released a new poll yesterday. A couple weeks ago, SurveyUSA conducted a poll for them which showed Hagan up 3 points. This time, Civitas employed the services of National Research, their traditional pollster. In this poll, Hagan leads by 5 points with leaners included. (Without leaners, Hagan is up by only 1, but at this point there’s no need to exclude leaners from the equation.)
My reaction? While not a terrible poll for Tillis, it’s not a good poll either. Right now, Tillis needs some good polls. He hasn’t led in a survey since the YouGov poll taken in late August/early September. It’s now October and it’s crunch time, really.
Senate election
Hagan – 46%
Tillis – 41%
Haugh – 4%
Undecided – 9%
If Tillis wins two-thirds of undecideds, then we’d end up with this as the result on Election Night:
Hagan – 49%
Tillis – 47%
Haugh – 4%
Senate election (without Haugh)
Hagan – 50%
Tillis – 43%
Undecided – 7%
And if Tillis wins two-thirds of undecideds … doesn’t matter, Hagan is at 50%. This is actually the worst part of the poll for Team Tillis, because it suggests that Haugh is now disproportionately taking support from Hagan … room for her to grow. I wouldn’t take much stock in this result because of the very small sample size, but I really doubt Haugh will end up playing a big role in this election. If Tillis loses, no one is going to be blaming the pizza boy.
The other thing that stood out to me is the racial composition of the sample. Whites are at 72%, blacks are at 22%. The former seems too low and the latter seems too high, for a midterm, but maybe a strong Hagan ground game will yield that kind of electorate. If it does, then they should be very pleased with themselves, because it means they’re going to win. “Unskewing” the poll so that it resembles an electorate between that of 2010 and 2012 would make the result a little better for Tillis, but he’d probably still be behind.
Hagan approval
50% Approve
43% Disapprove
Now here’s the weird part of the poll, and the ones where it’s in disagreement with most of the other pollsters … if Hagan is really at 50% approval, then she’s going to win because North Carolinians apparently have no real reason to throw her out. You don’t lose an election when you’re an incumbent unless you’re unpopular (except in very extraordinary circumstances.)
Tillis approval
42% Approve
41% Disapprove
This question pertains to Tillis’s role as Speaker of the House. On this question, National Research shows North Carolinians to be fairly polarized by his tenure, but in the end, it’s a net positive, even after all the ads blasting Tillis for cutting $500 million from education and robbing schoolchildren to give money to his wealthy friends. Yes … contrary to popular wisdom, both candidates are well-liked by North Carolinians. They think Hagan is doing a bang-up job as Senator, and while they’re not as enthusiastic about Tillis’s service, his tenure still gets a passing grade. Who knew? (Then again, the CNN poll found Tillis with a positive rating, so maybe it’s not that far-fetched.)
Men are 48% of the sample, women are 52% … sounds about right. Men, predictably, go to Tillis by about the same margin as women go for Tillis, around 10 points. As for undecideds, they’re more white, more Republican, and more female. Women being a greater proportion of undecided voters isn’t something that we’ve found consistently throughout this Senate race and that’s still the case this late in the game. Maybe men are just more decisive (or more stubborn in their choices).
To conclude, add to the pile another poll that looks good for Hagan. If there’s any good news for Tillis in this poll, it’s that her lead appears to be based on very soft support, and the sample in this survey looks to be more like 2012 than 2010, at least in terms of race. But whichever way you slice it, Hagan is ahead, indisputably, with just over a month left to go. Tillis can catch up, but he needs to cut into Hagan’s soft support and win most of the undecideds. The bad news? The DSSC is playing to win here, and they’re going to continue to spend a huge amount of money here. It’s questionable if conservative groups will be able to match them. And North Carolina is a very expensive state. If Tillis does end up losing, money, or the lack thereof, will be a huge part of it.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
Anyone but Tillis after what he has done in the NC legislature. Go Kay!
The man who triumphantly led the NCGOP in passing all that radical legislation in the NCGA is losing in the pols to a very unpopular sitting senator. And this, despite the expansive support of the Koch brothers. Perhaps voters don’t want anti-abortion, anti-education, anti-middle class policies rammed down their throats.
NC is a bellwether state – we’ll see which way the wind blows this November. I don’t think Tillis will be the victor. At least I hope…
To Mick – Tillis has been in attack mode. He needs to define the benefits of voting for him, not just attack Hagan. Unclear from his campaign why he’s the right choice, except that he’s not Hagan. “I’m not her” is a horrible brand identity for a politician.
Your GOP friends and their arch-conservative support groups throw huge sums of money to defeat Dems. So, it’s heartwarming for me and not “bad news” at all to know that Hagan has solid support from Dem/liberal/moderate groups.
Tillis continues to trail, I say because he continues to play defense. And when he tries to put his best foot forward and offer up his own vision for NC, it just doesn’t wash or seem sincere. Perhaps that’s because he has no vision other than to win political office, or maybe because no one can believe his words given his actions (like supporting Medicare or the unemployed when he pushed not to expand Medicaid and to limit unemployment benefits, or to claim a 7% teacher raise when everyone knows –even the governor– that it wasn’t anywhere near that for veteran teachers).
The clock is ticking. He has to risk things for a lucky punch at this point. I suspect Tillis will go full-attack-mode with negative ads against Hagan that will get more callous and prevaricating. Here’s hoping those work against him by turning off any undecideds left out there.