Senate Race Still Too Close for Comfort

by | Sep 29, 2014 | Carolina Strategic Analysis, Features, Poll Analysis, Polling, US Senate

It’s a bit early for Democrats to be popping the champagne. Tillis is still in the game and the U.S. Senate race here in North Carolina is far from being won. Yesterday, a CNN poll showed Hagan leading by 3 points, within the margin of error. Hagan is far below the magic 50% number. (I’m not sure Hagan has a path to 50% – not that she needs to get there to win.) Haugh is still taking 7% of the vote. And then are still plenty who are undecided.

” target=”_blank”>The RCP average is currently 44.5% Hagan and 41.0% Tillis. Polls with Sean Haugh or an “other” option have them averaging 5.8% of the vote. Tillis says Haugh will get 4%-5%, max. Tillis’s own strategist Paul Shumaker says all their modeling for the race shows Haugh getting less than 2% on Election Day. Haugh received 1.45% when he ran for Senate back in 2002.

Tom Jensen says Haugh is no longer taking disproportionately from Tillis, and the CNN poll confirms that. Not that Tillis needs to bank on Haugh supporters to win, even though, significantly, the Chamber of Commerce is having Rand Paul cut an ad on Tillis’s behalf, ostensibly in an attempt to peel off the Greg Brannon-Rand Paul-Libertarian-Tea Party-pro-liberty crowd. Even with Haugh included in the poll averages, allocating two-thirds of undecided voters to the challenger, Tillis, yields a 1-point margin of victory for the Republican. I’m a skeptic on the whole “undecideds-go-to-the-challenger” theory, but if that’s the case in North Carolina, Hagan should be nervous.

Significantly, the CNN poll has Tillis with a higher favorable than unfavorable rating, and Hagan with negative job approval. I’m not sure I buy the first part, because if it really is the case that Tillis has a favorable image then this election should be over. But the poll does indicate Tillis has room to grow.

The Hagan campaign has thrown pretty much everything they could at Tillis, but have really only succeeded at reducing his support rather than growing her own. In the average of polling, she still hasn’t cracked 45%. The polls will probably close. The question is just how much. Despite Hagan’s ad barrage, the fundamentals haven’t changed, and the fundamentals favor a Republican victory unless said Republican has exceptionally bad favorables. I will say this: the Hagan people have run a pretty much flawless campaign and they should be proud of that. But in the end, it might not be enough. We’ll have to wait and see.

The bottom line is not that Tillis will win, but that many prognosticators have been too quick to put this in the “Leans Democratic” category when it’s probably a Toss-Up. Of course, at this point I’d still rather be Hagan, because it’s almost October and a 3 or 4-point lead at this point in the race is pretty significant. And Hagan is set to maintain a huge spending advantage over Tillis this month he’ll have to overcome if he wants to come out the victor. Still, fundamentals are fundamentals, and I wouldn’t predict anything other than a very close result on Election Night.

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