If North Carolina is going to turn blue this year, major shifts in the Wake County political landscape since 2004 will be a primary driver in making it happen.
Four years ago George W. Bush won the county by two points. Now Barack Obama has a commanding 57-40 lead there. There's no doubt that in migration and new voters are a huge factor in this movement. Among people voting for President in Wake County for the first time he has a 72-26 lead. He's up by a remarkable 61-28 margin with independents in the county, and has banked a 70-29 lead with folks who have already voted.
We predict that there could be a shift of up to 80-90,000 votes in Wake County relative to 2004, which would make up about 20% of John Kerry's statewide gap relative to George W. Bush right there.
This could have major implications up and down the ballot. Barack Obama might just bring folks like Al Swanstrom, running against Nelson Dollar, and Chris Mintz, running against Neal Hunt with him.
Wake County is also providing a huge boost to Kay Hagan's prospects for election to the US Senate. She leads 55-41 in the county and has a 29 point edge with independents.
Bev Perdue leads 51-43.
Full results here.
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6 comments:
Tom,
What's the turnout is likely to be in NC? From my research, I'm projecting that about 4,100,000 voters will turnout on election day and African Americans will make up from about 850,000 to 875,000 of those voters. Does that seem reasonable?
Yes that sounds very reasonable.
Thank you and can't wait for your final batch of polls.
Tom,
If you were the Perdue campaign, wouldn't you find it troubling that she is running 6 pts behind Obama and McCrory running 3 pts ahead of McCain?
Especially given the fact that Easley ran about 9 points ahead of Kerry in Wake county 4 years ago.
She is going to run behind Obama in places like Wake and Mecklenburg and run ahead of him in probably 70-80 of the other 100 counties.
Seems dangerous to me since something like 2/3rds of the voters in NC are in like 30 counties.
So if she's going to run behind Obama in the 30 most populous counties, she's going to lose.
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