Friday, September 12, 2008

Civitas Governor

Civitas finds the same one point lead for Bev Perdue over Pat McCrory that we did the other day.

One of the key things here: Perdue is under 70% with black voters. That squares with our recent finding and reminds me of this advice I have for the Perdue campaign and basically all down ballot Democrats:
Court black voters hard. The Perdue campaign did a tremendous job in the primary of reaching out to black voters through robocalls, direct mail, and radio. While it may be tempting to just assume that everyone turning out to vote for Obama this fall will fill in the straight ticket oval, I think it's dangerous to take that for granted. Our polling is showing a surprising number of black voters reporting as undecided in the races other than President. I'm sure many of those folks will end up voting the Democratic ticket, but better safe than sorry- go back to the outreach efforts that worked so well against Moore.
These numbers are not what they should be for Perdue. I think the new ad running on stem cell research is very good and a step in the right direction, but I still think the biggest problem for the campaign right now is that the voters are not hearing her talk directly to them about the issues:
Most voters in the state have probably not heard a word out of Bev's mouth since the primary. While Pat McCrory was up on the air in August telling us personally what he was going to do to help our pocketbooks (even if it's mularkey) the ads running on Perdue's behalf were almost all of the 'sinister voiceover' variety. Perdue's best run of this entire campaign was the three weeks leading up to the primary when her ads were heavily focused on herself talking about what she was going to do if she was elected. I think the most effective way Perdue can be presented these last two months is in ads where she's talking the whole thirty seconds about what she'll do if elected on pocketbook issues, health care, and education. Sometimes going back to basics is the best course of action. When people see and hear Bev, most of them like her. Put that reality to good use.
Just 53 more days...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tom,

I heard a caption on Perdue in Bill LuMaye show (WPTF).They were talking about drilling and Perdue response in the debate. Her numbers are not going up because of her performance and lack of confidence in the way, she answers questions. She did a horrible job of answering that question. One more debate performance like that will close the deal for McCroy.

Now, I am thinking about your analysis in WPTF on the day after the debate. You were quick to debunk that, the debate does not make much difference. Interesting!!

 
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