Civitas Polls

I don't have much to say about this week's Civitas polls, not because of any problem with them but because the races right now are largely stagnant. Sorry the blog has been so boring lately, at least on the NC politics front.

For President they have John McCain up 45-41 on Barack Obama. No surprise there. The poll has gotten criticized in some quarters for only being 18% black when the 2004 exit poll for North Carolina said the electorate was 26% black. The exit poll was not correct- the data from the state Board of Elections indicates that black voters actually made up just 18.5% of the electorate that year. I do think Obama should push black turnout to 20 to 22% in the state, but Civitas' percentage is not completely unreasonable.

For Senate it's Elizabeth Dole at 48% and Kay Hagan at 38%. That seems a little more realistic to me than the Rasmussen poll showing it at a 14% deficit for Hagan last week. That would basically equate to Hagan having completely lost the bounce she got from running an active campaign in the primary, and while it does seem that a good amount of that has dissipated I don't think it's gone completely kaput. Hagan is only polling at 61% with Democrats in the poll- that doesn't necessarily mean the poll is wrong at this point in the game but I'm sure Hagan will be doing much better than that by the end.

For Governor Bev Perdue is at 43% and Pat McCrory has 41%. This general election has been exceptionally boring so far.