Civitas Results: Governor

This month's Civitas Poll brings the best polling news Richard Moore and Fred Smith have seen in a while. Moore trails Bev Perdue 28-23, while Smith is just one point behind Pat McCrory, 18-17, with Bill Graham at 5% and Bob Orr at 4%.

One thing that strikes me as a little odd in these numbers is that the percentage of undecideds in the Democratic race is up to 49% from 42% a month ago in the Civitas Poll, and on the Republican side they've gone from 50% up to 56% in the last month. It's not normal to have the undecideds go up moving closer to an election. But every now and then you just get a sample that's less decisive or paying less attention- we had something like that in our January Democratic tracking poll.

One trend this poll indicates that I definitely see emerging in the last ten weeks of the campaign is the Republican contest turning into a two person race between McCrory and Smith as the conservative alternative. I expect that construct will continue to present itself moving forward.

It'll be interesting when we do our poll next week to see if we find the same tightening in the two gubernatorial primaries.