Romney holds small lead in NC

PPP's newest North Carolina poll finds Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama 48-46. It's a small lead but still significant in that it's the first time we've found Romney ahead in our monthly polling of the state since October.

Romney's gained 7 points on Obama in North Carolina since April, when the President led by a 49-44 margin. Since then Romney's erased what was a 51-38 lead for Obama with independents and taken a 42-41 lead with that voting group. He's also increased his share of the Democratic vote from 15% to 20%, suggesting he's convincing some more conservative voters within the party to cross over.

Voters in the state have significantly warmed up to Romney in the couple of months since he sewed up the Republican nomination. 41% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 46% with a negative one. Those numbers still aren't great but they represent a 24 point improvement on the margin from April when Romney was at a -29 spread (29/58).

Richard Burr hasn't received too much buzz as a potential Romney Vice Presidential choice, and if Romney did pick him it would have a negligible impact on the race in North Carolina. Romney's lead would go from 48/46 to 47/46. Burr's lack of effect is probably attributable to his relative anonymity in the state- 8 years after his initial election to the Senate 32% of voters still have no opinion about him, one of the highest 'not sure' rates we find for any Senator in the country.

One caveat with Romney's lead on this poll is that it finds Obama winning the black vote by only a 76/20 margin. That seems like an unrealistically low share of African American voters for Obama. The bottom line on this poll is the same as pretty much every one we've done in the state over the last 18 months- North Carolina is one of the most closely contested toss up states in the country, it could go either way, and the way the campaigns are spending here backs up that assessment.

Full results here

Comments

[Jordan]

Why was Gary Johnson not included in the poll? He is polling at around 8% on average in other polls, which is huge for a presidential election. Why is PPP excluding him?

[Rnegade]

I wonder how much supporting gay marriage has hurt Obama in NC. After all, they did support the gay marriage ban by quite a large margin.

[MarylandDad51]

I have to wonder if some of the "black" respondents in this sample were really white GOP pranksters trying to mess up the poll results. The percentage of black voters supporting Romney in most recent surveys has been so low that it is hard for me to believe that you could have gotten a true black subsample with 20 percent Romney supporters, even allowing for sampling error.

[realnrh]

Johnson was at 8% in PPP's poll in January and at 6% in May. Outside of maybe New Mexico, Arizona and New Hampshire, he's not going to pull anything close to that number anywhere. When his support is so low to start with, he pretty much can't poll lower, so will tend to poll higher within the margin of error.

Build local party apparatus first, get some state legislative seats, become an actual party instead of a Republican adjunct, and then Libertarians might be positioned to field a credible candidate. Same would go for Greens on the other side. And yes, Libertarians are tremendously more aligned with Republicans than Democrats; Republicans and Libertarians in philosophy and practice are enthusiastically aligned in the desire to destroy the American government, and no other issue on the Libertarian platform is of anywhere near that magnitude to the vast majority of Democrats.

Running a presidential race without having a competitive party on the rest of the ticket is pretty much hoping that lightning strikes. Don't expect to get lottery-winner coverage just because you bought a ticket.

[Naturalized Texan]

MARGIN OF ERROR 3.4%
YOU MENTION THE 2 POINT SPREAD, BUT NOT THE FACT THAT IT IS WELL WITHIN THE MARGIN OF ERROR.
THAT'S JUST BAD REPORTING.