Robin Carnahan is in in Missouri. Kendrick Meek and Dan Gelber are in Florida. Jennifer Brunner and Lee Fisher are in Ohio. And the list could go on...
Most of the Senate seats Democrats are viewed as having a good chance of taking next year, folks are already lining up to run. But things have been awfully quiet in North Carolina, with no announcements from leading potential candidates Roy Cooper and Heath Shuler.
Mind you, I don't think this is a sign for concern at all. Kay Hagan ran an all star campaign after not jumping in until October.
I do think if any second tier candidates wanted to run now would be the time to announce and build up early support and start showing fundraising capability. After what happened last year it seems very likely that an 'A' list candidate will eventually get into the race, and if anyone who doesn't fit that description wants to have a chance it would probably behoove them to get a head start.
The point of all this musing being that with no candidates announced we'll keep testing hypothetical ones against Richard Burr, and we're going to plan on Elaine Marshall for this weekend since we haven't looked at any women yet and she does have statewide name recognition.
We have room for a couple more questions in general on our monthly tracking/issue poll for North Carolina. Any ideas? My preference is questions that can yield interesting crosstabs- like the native/non-native stuff- or ones that help us understand how North Carolina is changing, like the Jesse Helms/Jim Hunt question last month. But we're open to anything, leave your ideas in the comments.
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How about a question about tuition increases at public NC universities? Our universities are becoming increasingly expensive, which isn't something that is polled about very often, but institutions of higher education are covered in the NC Constitution. Something to consider...
Or how about a question regarding state level environmental regulations? With all this focus on the economy, environmental protections are often pushed aside while we try and re-start the economy.
Occupation/job sectors as an added demographic. I'm curious (generally) about how NC votes split out amongst workers in "new economy" jobs versus "traditional" employment sectors (in grossly oversimplified terms, I suspect the "non-natives" sample break out along employment sectors as well as voting more Dem). I also think that it might be particularly interesting to get a snapshot of financial sector workers at this moment.
I realize that this yields a longer, unwieldy question for phone surveying, and I'm not even sure how many broad categories you'd need.
Alternatively, just an employment status question might be interesting, particularly if you as an "out of work in the past year" in addition to "currently unemployed."
What about oversampling the Charlotte area and taking an early look at the Mayoral Race 2009?
Pat McCrory was absolutely safe, but Obama and Hagan both got more than 60% there, so the Dems could pick this one up as an open seat race.
And as far as I know, no one has polled this yet.
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