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With the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina less than a month away, a new poll from PPP finds President Obama leading by three points in the state. From PPP:
PPP’s newest North Carolina poll continues to find an extremely close race for President in the state, with Barack Obama at 49% to 46% for Mitt Romney. PPP started monthly polling of this contest in November of 2010 and Obama and Romney have now been within 3 points of each 21 of the last 22 months.
North Carolina voters aren’t thrilled with the job Obama’s doing- 48% approve and 49% disapprove. But they continue to have pretty tepid feelings toward Romney with only 42% of voters rating him favorably to 50% who have a negative opinion of him.
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There’s an enormous gender gap in North Carolina with Obama leading 57-38 among women, but trailing 56-40 with men. Romney has a 48-44 lead with independents but Democrats can lose by that margin with independents and still win overall in North Carolina as long as they keep their party base in check and for now Obama’s doing that, taking 82% of the Democratic vote. Obama’s up 91-7 with African American voters- any thought that his position on gay marriage would hurt him on that front can be cast aside. And he’s only down 58-38 with white voters- if he can stay in that mid to upper 30s range with white voters it will probably be enough to put him over the top.
Despite this poll I still find it hard to believe Obama will carry the state this November. The Real Clear Politics polling average of what limited polling there has been of the state has Romney up by one.
Obama only barely won the state by less than half a percentage point in 2008. Of all the states he won in 2008, it was the closest, and no one thinks he will be riding nearly as big a national wave as he did last time. In addition the state Democratic party is having some serious problems.
That said the polling is tight enough that it is clear Romney is going to need to work hard to win the state. Every minute and dollar Romney spends trying to keep what was once a solid Republican state is likely a net positive for the Obama team. Obama can easily win re-election without North Carolina but it would be hard for Romney to beat him without it.
8 Comments
Do I recall correctly that Obama got a pretty decent bounce in Colorado after the 2008 Denver convention? Could the same thing happen in NC this year?
How are the populist candidates, such as Jill Stein & Rocky Anderson, that represent the 99% polling against the 2 officially recognized puppets of the Corporatocracy?
So far not getting the 99%.
Stein “is almost unknown, much like most third-party nominees she’ll likely get a small fraction of 1 percent.” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist from the University of Virginia who directs the university’s Center for Politics.
Q15 If the candidates for President next year were Democrat Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney, and independent Rocky Anderson, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama………………………………………… 44%
Mitt Romney…………………………………………. 43%
Rocky Anderson………………………………………. 4%
Undecided…………………………………………… 8%
It is a waste.
It may take while for people to adopt MY strategy.
If you live in a blue state or red state, vote third party to show your disdain for BOTH parties. More n’ likely you won’t effect the result but show how disaffected we are. If you are in a purple state, sorry, you gotta pick the lesser of two evils. In three or four cycles, maybe, just maybe the disaffected vote will be 12-14%. Not enough to get a third party candidate elected, but ENOUGH to determine who of the two major pary candidates wins.
PLease refer to this as the “Carguy Ultimatum”.
Jon, your analysis does not take into consideration the fact that North Carolina is gaining population by immigration from other states, many of them from the North, and those voters are probably more likely to support Obama. Also, there is a generational shift, with many people who were born in the twenties and thirties no longer in the voting population, being replaced by people who were born after 1990, and by people born in the 80s who may not have voted in earlier elections but are now becoming more reliable voters as they reach their thirties. Especially in the South, there seems to have been a significant generational voting gap in 2008 between Millennials and Generation Y voters, and the Silent Generation voters who grew up in the Jim Crow era and were already pretty settled as conservative Republican voters by the late 1960s. I think the change over a four year period could easily move the state 2 points more Democratic than it would have been four years ago, and that would be enough to cover what may be a two point swing away from Obama among the national numbers, where he won by 7 points over McCain and may win by only 3 or 4 over Romney.
Sounds about right. NC is benefiting from demographic changes in the way Virginia has: more immigrants, more younger, educated people moving their for work, and a dying off of the Jim Crow generation.
If what you say is true, then the “more younger, educated people” would have answered other or none of the above, otherwise they’re not well informed.