Tuesday, January 22, 2008

North Carolina Senate Poll

Dole Approval:

Approve 44
Disapprove 33

Elizabeth Dole 48 Kay Hagan 35
Dole 49 Jim Neal 30

Elizabeth Dole continues to be unable to get her approval rating out of the mid-40s, but the Democratic candidates vying to replace her are not getting any traction either.

Dole's lead over Kay Hagan has gone from 12 points to 13 since last month, while her lead over Neal has expanded from 15 points to 19.

One key finding is that while only 7% of Republican are undecided about Dole/Hagan and just 8% are undecided about Dole/Neal, 19% and 27% of Democrats are undecided in those two races respectively. Many Democratic voters at this point are not sure whether they'll support the Democratic alternative or just vote to reelect Dole (party identification of the candidates was given in the survey.)

The election is a long way off, but Dole is benefiting from the failure of the Democratic candidates to start going negative on her now. It will likely take ten months of attacks to knock off such a well known candidate. Neal and Hagan are rightly focusing on fundraising, but they're going to need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time to defeat Elizabeth Dole and waiting too much longer to start driving up her negatives is pretty risky.

Full results here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting survey data, but it's worth noting that while the poll seems to have the right numbers as far as race/gender representation, it skews quite old.

74% of the voters surveyed were 45 or older, and 26% were over 65. Does that really reflect N.C. voter demographics?

 
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