PPP has a new poll out of North Carolina today and it pretty much tells us what we already know but with a few catches:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
Kay Hagan leads Thom Tillis 38/36 with Libertarian candidate Sean Haugh pulling a surprisingly high 11%. Haugh's presence in the race has the potential to be a headache for Tillis moving forward if the contest remains this competitive- people planning to vote for him right now say they would support Tillis over Hagan 47/27 if they had to choose between the major party candidates. When you reallocate those folks the race is tied at 41%- usually a 2 point difference like that doesn't matter but given the closeness of this one it could.
Haugh's surprising support is likely the function of voters being pretty down on both of the major party candidates. Hagan has a 38/49 approval spread, pretty consistent with where her numbers have been since Republicans began running attack ads on her last fall. Tillis is at a 30/46 favorability spread, including only 51/23 with GOP voters. Despite his outright win last week some folks within his own party continue to be disaffected with him and are leaning toward voting Libertarian at least for now.
In a lot of the US Senate races that are competitive right now the undecided voters are strongly Republican leaning, suggesting that the races could break toward the GOP in the end. That's not the case here though- undecideds actually voted for Barack Obama by a 55/37 margin in 2012 and are pretty evenly split on his approval right now at 40/42. That makes it likely this race will remain within a couple points one way or the other moving forward. - PPP, 5/13/14
PPP's poll also finds that Tillis' extreme rightward shift is also hurting him:
One thing our poll finds is that a lot of the positions Tillis took in order to help him win the Republican nomination without a runoff have the potential to come back and hurt him in the general election. He said climate change was not a fact but by a 24 point margin (54/30) North Carolinians overall think it is a fact, including 53/30 with independents. He said the US Department of Education should be eliminated but by a 23 point margin (53/30) North Carolinians overall think it should not be eliminated, including 49/34 with independents. And he said he didn't support the federal minimum wage, but by a 19 point margin (55/36) North Carolinians overall support increasing the minimum wage to $10 an hour, including 55/35 with independents. All of those issue stances play well with Republican primary voters, but none of them do with the voters who will decide the general election. - PPP, 5/13/14
Hagan happens to be on the right side of these issues and this will help her. Of course Art Pope, Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers will continue to spend big to defeat Hagan, especially since he has been strongly defending the ACA. If you want to donate and get involved with Hagan's campaign, you can do so here:
http://www.kayhagan.com/