PPP’s latest poll finds competitive races up and down the ballot for the 2016 election cycle in North Carolina. While Governor McCrory and especially Senator Burr seem favored for reelection, the presence of Trump at the top of the ticket could prove to be an albatross for their candidacies.

Numbers in parentheses = change in support from last month.

President Race
44% Clinton (+1)
42% Trump (-2)

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 2, an improvement from last month. Trump’s performance in general election polling has taken a hit over the past month and North Carolina is no exception. Trump isn’t getting the kind of crossover support from Democrats or support from independents he needs to win statewide.

But what’s really hurting him is the lack of support from Republicans. If Trump can just consolidate the Republican vote, he has an excellent chance of winning the state. Of course, he would still have a long way to go to winning nationwide.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is actually the stronger general election candidate. PPP shows Cruz actually doing one point worse than Trump. Kasich is by far the strongest general election candidate on the GOP side.

Senate Race
40% Burr (-3)
35% Ross (-2)
7% Haugh

Burr leads Democratic Senate nominee Deborah Ross by 5 points. It’s not uncommon for primary winners to get a boost in name recognition and support following a victory, and that’s possibly what we’re seeing here right now. The support for Haugh should decrease as the election cycle goes on.

Governor Race
42% McCrory (-1)
40% Cooper (-1)
6% Cecil

There’s been no real change in the governor’s race. This one should go down to the wire. Both candidates have strengths and weaknesses and the ability to persuade people to support them. The support for the Libertarian Cecil should decrease as the election cycle goes on. It’s unlikely either candidate will disproportionately benefit from this.

Lieutenant Governor Race
36% Coleman
33% Forest

Another race that will go down to the wire. There’s no one in North Carolina whose political outcome is more tied to what’s going on nationally. If Democrats get a good turnout this November, Forest will have trouble getting reelected.

Treasurer Race
39% Blue
36% Folwell

Republicans really want to pick up this Council of State position, but Democrats recruited a strong candidate in Dan Blue III. This is another race that will be determined by the national environment.

Attorney General
38% Stein
37% Newton

Stein, who is resigning from the NC Senate to focus on his Attorney General campaign, just barely leads State Senator Buck Newton. Whoever wins here could be in a solid position to run for governor someday. This is yet another race where the national environment will be decisive. Stein should be a little concerned about his narrow primary win over Marcus Williams last week and whether that points to problems for him down the road.

The bottom line – there’s a ton at stake this year in North Carolina. If Republicans nominate Trump, Democrats have a good chance of repeating their massive victories of 2008. But the races are close enough that a Republican sweep is also possible. It’s just too early to tell at this point.

5 Comments

  1. Maurice Murray III

    In PPP’s general election matchup between Cruz and Clinton, Clinton led 45% to 42%, which is significant because North Carolina tilts red., and Mitt Romnesia won NC by a small margin in 2012.

    I suspect the convention will result in Trump being denied the nomination and Cruz the only plausible alternative.

  2. LS

    Yes, Trump and Clinton are neck in neck, but it’s Bernie Sanders who can soundly beat Trump. The DNC needs to stop favoring the weaker candidate and allow the people the Democratic candidate they actually want – Bernie Sanders.

    • Nortley

      Sanders runs better than Clinton right now because he has had so little vetting by the national media and has not been the target of the right wing attack machine that has gone after Clinton for nearly 30 years.

      Once they go after him and hang the S word (a label he embraces) around his neck he will sink faster than the a stone tossed in water.

      And oh, if he is the “Democratic candidate” the people “actually want” then why is he trailing in both delegates and the popular vote?

  3. Dennis V Berwyn

    https://newrepublic.com/article/114682/ppp-polling-methodology-opaque-flawed

    There’s Something Wrong With America’s Premier Liberal Pollster
    The problem with PPP’s methodology
    BY NATE COHN
    September 12, 2013
    No pollster attracts more love and hate than Public Policy Polling. The Democratically aligned polling firm routinely asks questions that poke fun at Republicans, like whether then-Senator Barack Obama was responsible for Hurricane Katrina. Not coincidentally, Republicans routinely accuse them of being biased toward Democrats. Last fall, PPP was front and center in conservative complaints about allegedly skewed polls. But when the election results came in, PPP’s polls were vindicated and the conspiracy-minded critics were debunked.

    Pollsters, though, tend to judge one another based more on methodology than record. And for experts and competitors, the firm’s success remains difficult to explain. PPP doesn’t follow many of the industry’s best practices, like calling voters’ cell phones; the firm only calls landlines. It discards hundreds of respondents in an unusual process known as “random deletion.” And because PPP’s interviewers rely on lists of registered voters—rather than random digit dialing—and simply ask non-voters to hang up the phone, the firm can’t use census numbers to weight their sample, as many other pollsters do. This forces PPP to make more, and more subjective, judgments about just who will be voting.

    In PPP’s telling, the Raleigh-based firm overcomes the odds by mastering those subjective judgments, perfecting the art of projecting the composition of the electorate—the same art that eluded Republican pollsters in 2012. If this explanation was satisfying, perhaps PPP could settle into the top-ranked pollster slot without great protest. But PPP’s success, in fact, did not reflect a clairvoyant vision of the electorate. The racial composition of their polls swayed wildly. A recent Georgia poll was just wrong.

    After examining PPP’s polls from 2012 and conducting a lengthy exchange with PPP’s director, I’ve found that PPP withheld controversial elements of its methodology, to the extent it even has one, and treated its data inconsistently. The racial composition of PPP’s surveys was informed by whether respondents voted for Obama or John McCain in 2008, even though it wasn’t stated in its methodology. PPP then deleted the question from detailed releases to avoid criticism. Throughout its seemingly successful run, PPP used amateurish weighting techniques that distorted its samples—embracing a unique, ad hoc philosophy that, time and time again, seemed to save PPP from producing outlying results. The end result is unscientific and unsettling.

    • TY Thompson

      Oddly enough, these results for NC races are about what I expected. Which of course, is purely coincidental because you’re right, PPP is total garbage.

Related Posts

GET UPDATES

Get the latest posts from PoliticsNC delivered right to your inbox!

You have Successfully Subscribed!