Dead even in North Carolina

In 2008 North Carolina was the second closest state in the Presidential race. It looks more and more like it could be the closest this year. PPP's newest poll finds Barack Obama and Mitt Romney dead even at 48%. In 3 September PPP polls of the state we found a tie twice and a one point Obama lead the third time. Taking a bigger picture look, in 26 Obama/Romney polls dating back to November of 2010 we have only found the candidates separated by more than 3 points one time. It would be hard for the race in North Carolina to be much tighter.

North Carolinians narrowly disapprove of Obama, with 48% giving him good marks to 49% who are unhappy with his performance. They also have a narrowly unfavorable opinion of Romney with 46% of voters rating him positively to 49% with a negative opinion. The candidates are incredibly close on other measures as well. Romney leads Obama 49/47 in terms of who voters trust more on the economy, but Obama reverses those numbers for the 49/47 lead on who voters trust more on foreign policy.

57% of voters say they've been personally contacted by the Obama campaign, and 55% say they've been personally contacted by the Romney campaign. That those numbers are so close is an indication of the race in North Carolina being much different than 2008- the McCain campaign was sort of caught by surprise here and significantly lagged Obama's field operation.

Democrats in North Carolina are feeling more excitement about the campaign at this point than Republicans are. 69% say they're 'very excited' about voting this fall compared to 58% of GOP voters. Beyond that 80% of African Americans and 75% of voters under 30 said they were 'very excited' about voting. Those are the groups that fueled Obama's surprise North Carolina victory in 2008 so their continued excitement bodes very well for his ability to do it again.

Obama's up 54-42 with women, 92-7 with African Americans, and 60-32 with young voters in the state. Romney has a 57-40 lead with men, a 62-35 one with whites, and a 56-40 advantage with seniors. Democrats have a significant registration advantage in the state but Romney is overcoming that thanks to a 54-36 lead with independents.

The race in North Carolina started out as a toss up 2 years ago and it remains a toss up today. It's impossible to say who will end up coming out ahead.

Full results here

Comments

[Timothy Capwell]

Using the NC State Board Of Elections page for total number of voters, and doing the math from the totals by affiliation on their homepage shows the breakdown as

D: 43%
R: 31%
U: 25%

Your sample of 48/34/19 is hardly in line with this. You admit that Romney is winning unaffiliateds by 18%, yet you undersample them by 6% in this poll. Need I ask why?

[Obama 2012]

It's interesting how the PPP polls have actually been some of the least good ones for Obama recently (tied in NC and only up 4 in Ohio where other polls are showing leads in NC and 9 and 10 point leads in Ohio.)

Soon the right wingers will be pointing to these PPP polls to show that Romney's isn't so far behind...

[Steven]

Short version: PPP samples party self identification. BOE data is voter registration. Two very different things. The "why" is that Tom knows what he's doing and you are just looking for reasons to feel better about why Romney is losing. Just stick with unskewedpolls.com.

[Becky DaQuila]

Come on guys, you don't have to skew your samples to keep Obama competitive. We all know he is not winning NC again, but you shouldn't care since he doesn't need it anyway.

Romney is probably up by 2 or 3 points right now and will likely win by around 5. He's not the best candidate for NC, but then, neither is the president. Black voters will keep him above 47% no matter how badly he screws up, but in the end, it won't be enough.

I look forward to NC reverting back to normal in 2016, when Obama isn't on the ballot and his most ardent supporters don't turn out as usual.

[TJampel]

As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong here, PPP doesn't artificially set party affiliation; it respond to lv self-reporting of this metric. Many people who register as unaffiliated, when asked for Party ID, will say Dem or Republican, as they're being asked which party they identify with, not which party they are registered with.

So, it's not at all surprising the the number of unaffiliated voters is lower in a PPP poll, and, naturally, those voters' party preferences are distributed elsewhere---in this case more of them identified as Dem than Repub.

That's not to say that there was no intentional manipulation of polling data (though I doubt it, as PPP has been deadly accurate in NC for a number of years), but this one line of attack fails to show bad intent.

I'm also NOT saying that allowing voter ID to be fluid, rather than weighting it to actual statistics is the best way to go; but you have to admit that a segment of the population can easily identify more....or less...with their party during various cycles.

BTW, when Paul Ryan was first picked for VP and PPP went into WI the opposite effect was in evidence; in one of their polls Republicans actually outnumbered Dems by....I think....a point, contrary to the actual breakdown there. So, PPP data has swung both ways in recent weeks and months.

[William Jefferson Jr.]

I see you have to keep increasing the Democrat share of the sample to keep Obama even. D+14? That's +2 more than 2008. Curious that Obama is pulling advertising out of the state if there is this level of enthusiasm.

[Alan Snipes]

@Timothy Capwell; The debate about using Party ID is over. Several pollsters responded last week as to why they do not wight for Party ID.
Party ID from 2008 has nothing to do with what voters say is their Party ID this year. It is a response to a question asked by pollsters, not a statistic like race or gender. The debate is over. Deal with it.

[Manu]

Even if you get the 2008 partisan , Romney is up by 4, and if you get the 04 partisan is up by 12 . I don't know in the rest of the states but i think Obama has little chance in North Carolina.

[Bob]

Can we please have South Carolina and Georgia as choices for where to poll next? I really want to see where the candidates lie in both states. Neither has been polled much at all.

[Obama 2012]

Manu - Party ID is not static. If Obama is winning big there will be more people identifying as Democrats. What you are seeing as evidence of "bias" is actually just evidence that Obama is kicking ass.