Foxx tops NC Republican wish list

Virginia Foxx tops the wish list of North Carolina Republicans for who they'd like as their Senate candidate next year: 17% pick her to 14% for Sue Myrick, 13% for Patrick McHenry, 11% for Renee Ellmers, 9% for George Holding, 6% for Richard Hudson, 4% for Mark Meadows, and 2% for Thom Tillis. 25% say that they prefer someone else or are unsure.

Foxx is at the head of the line because of her appeal to the 'very conservative' wing of the party. 21% of those voters prefer her to 17% for Myrick and 12% for McHenry. She has very strong support in the Triad. Moderate voters prefer McHenry with 14% picking him to 12% for Foxx and 10% for Myrick. He has strong support in the western part of the state.

It's clear at this point that Republicans really don't have any potential candidates with much of a statewide profile. The highest name recognition any of these folks has is Sue Myrick, and even she's at just 54%.

These numbers are humiliating for Thom Tillis. He's essentially been running for this seat for the last two years, and if any of these folks should have a big statewide profile it's him after holding town meetings all over the state. Yet he actually has a negative favorability rating among GOP primary voters- 12/17- and ranks in last place among everyone we tested at 2%. Certainly it is very early but his efforts so far haven't made much of an impact.

Kay Hagan leads all of these potential Republican foes at this point. Sue Myrick is the only who comes particularly close, trailing 45/44. Hagan has at least a 6 point advantage over everyone else we tested: 45/39 over Renee Ellmers, 48/40 over Patrick McHenry, 48/39 over George Holding, 49/39 over Virginia Foxx, and 48/38 over Tillis.

Hagan has a 44% approval rating, with 43% of voters disapproving of her. That close division over her job performance mirrors what we've seen for her pretty much since she took office, and it also mirrors what we saw for Richard Burr at this time four years ago. 2010 turned out to be a strong Republican year and he was carried along with the wave. Hagan seems to face a similar situation- if 2014 is a good year for Dems, she's popular enough that she should be reelected. If 2014 is a bad year for Dems, she may not be strong enough to survive it. But Republicans will need a strong candidate to take advantage and right now it's not clear who that is.

One thing seems likely: a tight Senate race will put North Carolina in the national spotlight for the 3rd time in the last 4 election cycles.

Full results here

Comments

[Alex Jones]

Tom--
During your next NC senate poll, do you think it would make sense to provide short biographies of the GOP candidates? Since the candidates have such low name recognition, it seems like giving voters a sense of who they are would modify the results to at least some degree. In particular, Patrick McHenry might plummet among self-described "moderate" voters. Plus, you could add Jim Cain, who's basically guaranteed to be unknown but might poll pretty well, especially in the Triangle.