Survey USA Republican Poll

Some interesting trends in this week's Survey USA Republican gubernatorial poll compared to their one last week that make a runoff seem like more of a possbility:

-Last week Pat McCrory and Fred Smith combined for 68% in their poll. Bill Graham and Bob Orr combined for 12%.

-This week McCrory and Smith went up two points, to a combined 70%. But Graham and Orr went up five points for a combined 17%.

So, improbably, the two lesser funded and well known candidates gained more in their poll in the last week than the two frontrunners.

I don't know if that's a real trend or a statistical anomaly- we didn't show the same thing- but it would certainly make a runoff more likely. Graham and Orr would need to pick up another 5% from the 13% undecided in their poll, or 39% of the undecideds (and have Smith and McCrory dead even). That's still asking them to pull a lot more than the 20% of decided voters they're currently getting but it makes another seven weeks seem more plausible than either our poll today or last week's incarnation of the Survey USA poll. We shall see.