Monmouth’s latest stop is in North Carolina, where the school’s new poll gives Republican Sen. Richard Burr a 45-43 edge over Democrat Deborah Ross. In the gubernatorial contest, by contrast, Democrat Roy Cooper swamps GOP Gov. Pat McCrory 52-43. This sample also has Hilary Clinton beating Donald Trump 44-42.
The HuffPost Pollster average gives Burr a 41-38 advantage in the Senate race, which is very close to what Monmouth finds. And in a sign of how competitive Republicans believe the contest has become, the conservative group One Nation added another $1 million to their ad buy for Burr, taking their total investment to $2.5 million here so far.
But Monmouth’s gubernatorial numbers are harder to figure out. Cooper’s lead in the Pollster average is a much smaller 46-43 margin, and generally, surveys have found a close race. The one exception came from Marist, which had Cooper ahead 51-44 recently, but that same poll also found Clinton on top by an implausible 45-36 spread. Monmouth’s poll is much harder to dismiss as overly blue. So is it possible that McCrory really has slid dramatically?
It’s possible, though it’s hard to say. McCrory infamously signed the anti-LGBT HB2 back in March, prompting a national outcry that led a number of major corporations to cancel planned expansions into North Carolina. In a high-profile protest, the NBA even moved its 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte. It’s no surprise, then, that Monmouth finds that 70 percent of respondents agree that HB2 has been bad for the state. Yet despite the ongoing debacle, voters still give McCrory a 39-41 favorable rating—not a great number, but a whole lot better than what his 9-point deficit against Cooper would suggest.
Cooper, the state attorney general, has a positive 38-18 favorability score himself, but 44 percent have no opinion of him, which confirms that the race to date has indeed been about McCrory and not his challenger. It’s possible that HB2 is so toxic that even a significant number of voters who like McCrory think he needs to go for the good of the state, but we’ll need more data before we can say that the governor is in as bad shape as Monmouth says he is.
But even if the gubernatorial race looks more like the HuffPo average than what Monmouth and Marist have seen, that’s still not good for the incumbent. And if both Trump and McCrory are losing, that’s likewise not good for Burr, since he’d have to depend on split-ticket voting to survive. In this day and age, no one seeking re-election in a swing state wants to be in that position.
So let's give Richard Burr some more reasons to sweat. Please chip in $3 to Deborah Ross today.