Wake County: Statewide Races

A look at how the Democratic candidates for the major statewide offices are doing in Wake County compared to their counterparts in 2004 tells the same story a lot of our recent data has- good news for Barack Obama and Kay Hagan, bad news for Bev Perdue:

Office	2004 Results	Poll Results
President	Bush +2	Obama +17
Senate	Bowles +4	Hagan +19
Governor	Easley +19	Perdue +9

To put into perspective how important Wake County is toward Obama's surprisingly strong standing in the state, consider this:

-There are, still five and a half weeks out from the election, about 75,000 more registered voters than there were in Wake County for the 2004 election.

-Even if no one else registered to vote in the county, and turnout as a percentage was not higher this year than in 2004 there would be 410,000 voters this time compared to about 360,000 last time.

-That means if the election was today Obama would take the county by roughly 70,000 votes. Given that Kerry lost it by around 7,000 that's a 77,000 vote gain for Obama in Wake County alone. That's 18% of the 435,000 vote margin George W. Bush took the state by last time right there.

One other note:

We talked last week about the new age of ticket splitters- those voting Democratic for President and Republican for Governor rather than the traditional Republican for President and Democratic for Governor combo. Wake County exemplifies this new trend. There are almost twice as voters planning vote an Obama/McCrory ticket here as there are a McCain/Perdue one.

Full results here.