Barack Obama 49
John McCain 48
Bob Barr 1
The deciding factor for President in North Carolina could be the weather on November 4th. Barack Obama is banking a huge lead among early voters, 63-36, who account for about a third of the likely electorate. But John McCain is up 53-42 with folks who plan to vote between now and election day. A rainy day could be to Obama's considerable benefit.
The tightening over the last week can be tied back to North Carolina voters reverting more to their usual trends. Obama had pulled to within 55-39 with white voters, but McCain's advantage there is now back up to 60-36.
McCain is also doing a better job of peeling off Democratic voters now, up to 19% compared to 14% a week ago. The percentage of poll respondents listing the economy as their top issue is below 60% for the first time in six weeks and that may have some culturally conservative white Democrats back to voting on values issues instead of the economy.
Nonetheless Obama still leads on the strength of a 51-39 lead with independents, a 65-24 advantage with folks who didn't vote in 2004, and his customary strong support from black and young voters.
Full results here
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2 comments:
I'm curious about the fact that 33% of the voters in the sample had voted already. As of today, 1.2 million of 6.2 million voters had voted (19% of registered voters), or 34% of the total turnout in 2004 (3.5 million). So it definitely seems to be an oversampling of early voters, as I find it difficult to beleive only 3.5 million will turn out this year.
I was polled as part of this recent update. I noted that the results are reported as "Likely Voters", but I was never asked whether I planned to vote as part of the election. There was a question about whether I had already voted. Perhaps there is an assumption that past participation is an indicator of likelihood of participating? If so, is PPP able to cross-reference participation from other jurisdictions (as I would imagine would be necessary for new residents)? Or does the lack of a history automatically put someone into the Not Likely category and then they are not polled?
I also noted that, since it was an automated system, PPP really has no way of knowing whether the individual they were trying to contact (I'll assume identified via voter rolls) is actually the person who answered the poll questions. Granted, the same could be done to a live person, but I suspect some psychological barriers make it a little less likely than with an automated system.
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