GOP Gov. Pat McCrory
Public Policy Polling surveys North Carolina's gubernatorial contest and they
continue to find a very tight race. GOP incumbent Pat McCrory now trails state Attorney General Roy Cooper 44-41; in April, McCrory held the 44-41 edge. PPP finds that the slippage is mostly from voters who backed Romney in 2012. McCrory recently vetoed two high-profile conservative bills, and it's quite possible that some Republican voters are pissed off enough to temporarily abandon the governor. But needless to say, it's a good bet that this group will come home sooner or later as memories fade, especially when McCrory's allies start blasting Cooper as an unhinged liberal.
McCrory remains unpopular but not reviled, sporting a 38-44 approval rating. Cooper, who announced his campaign last month, starts with a 32-24 favorable rating. A recent Telopinion Research poll for a pro-McCrory group painted a very different picture, giving the governor a hefty 57-32 approval rating. A late April Elon University survey gave McCrory a 38-43 rating and it's very unlikely that a cautious politician like Cooper would be running now if he thought McCrory's numbers were closer to Telopinion's than to PPP and Elon's.