Undecideds in North Carolina

Much has been made of the high undecideds in the Democratic Senate primary in North Carolina...but voters are actually making up their minds a little earlier this time around than they did two years ago.

Our poll last month found 51% of voters undecided about who they would support in the contest. In February of 2008 when Kay Hagan faced Jim Neal and an assortment of minor Democratic candidates 61% of voters were undecided at the same point in the race.

When will those undecideds start changing into firm commitments? If 2008 is much of a precedent it could be 5-6 weeks before we start seeing a significant amount of movement. The level of undecideds that time didn't drop below 50% until April 20th, and it didn't drop below 40% until the final pre-primary poll that finished up on May 4th.

Of course there are several reasons things could be different this year. If any of the candidates go up on television before mid-April their numbers could start to move quicker than Kay Hagan's did. And whereas the Senate race was an afterthought for most voters in 2008, something else to vote on while coming out to choose between Clinton and Obama, this time it will be the main attraction.

Still, it would be surprising to see a whole lot of movement in the next month. We'll have our March numbers next week and I imagine they'll be pretty similar to what we found in February

Here's the undecideds by date from the 2008 Senate primary:

Date	% Undecided in Senate Primary
2-6	61
3-3	55
3-17	57
3-24	61
3-30	58
4-6	64
4-13	58
4-20	47
4-27	47
5-4	36