PPP just released their newest North Carolina U.S. Senate poll and things are starting to tighten up:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
The North Carolina Senate race has tightened up quite a bit in the last couple months, with early attacks ads on Kay Hagan and the unpopular rollout of Obamacare taking a toll on her poll numbers. Hagan is now basically tied with her Republican challengers, leading Heather Grant 43/40, Thom Tillis 44/42, and Mark Harris 43/41 while trailing Greg Brannon 44/43.
Over the last two months Hagan's approval rating is pretty consistent. It was 43% in September and it's at 44% now. But her disapproval has spiked from 39% all the way up t0 49% over that period of time. It's no coincidence that the decline in Hagan's approval numbers tracks pretty closely with a big decline in President Obama's popularity over that same period of time. He's gone from having voters in the state pretty evenly divided about him in September at 48/49 to disapproving pretty strongly at 43/53.
It seems likely that the difficulties with the rollout of Obamacare are helping to make life more difficult for Hagan. It's always been unpopular in North Carolina and currently 38% of voters say they approve of it to 48% who disapprove, numbers pretty consistent with what we've found over the years. But what's really hurting Democrats is its being back in the news- 69% of voters say its rollout has been unsuccessful so far to only 25% who deem it a success. 49% say the rollout has been 'very unsuccessful.' Republicans (87%) and independents (75%) are pretty unanimous in their sentiment that the Obamacare launch hasn't gone well but even among Democrats only 41% give it positive ratings to 52% who think it's been problematic. - PPP, 11/12/13
PPP surveyed 701 North Carolina voters, including an oversample of 498 Republican primary voters, from November 8th to 11th. The margin of error for the overall survey is +
- 3.7% and for the Republican primary part it’s +-4.4%. PPP’s surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews.
State House Speaker Thom Tillis is finally in the lead in the Republican primary. He gets 20% of Republicans voters while Mark Harris gets 14%, Greg Brannon gets 11% and Heather Grant get 8%. 47% of Republican voters remain undecided. PPP's been warning that this race was going to tighten up. If Tillis is the nominee, Hagan will have the opportunity to highlight the fact that Tillis is the face of North Carolina's problems and that he's nothing but Art Pope's foot soldier. If you want to help Hagan fight back, please do consider donating or getting involved with her campaign. You can click here to do so:
http://www.kayhagan.com/