Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Perdue down 8 to McCrory

When it comes to Bev Perdue's poll numbers you can look at it one of two ways.

If you look at her situation just in terms of where she stands now it's a pretty sorry picture. Her approval rating is 37% with 48% of voters disapproving of her. Independents split against her 38/51 and only 58% of Democrats think she's doing a good job while at the same time 77% of Republicans think she's doing poorly. She trails Pat McCrory 47-39 for reelection, the same deficit she faced a month ago.

If you look at where she stands today in context with where her numbers have been in the past though, they look a little bit more promising. Six months ago she had an identical 48% disapproval to what she has now, but her approval rating was only 30%. So she's improved 7 points on that front. In fact her 37% standing right now is the best she's enjoyed since April of 2009, only 3 months after she took office. And while the 8 point deficit against McCrory is bad, it's not as bad as the 12 point one she had against him in February at 49-37.

Perdue's making progress. She hasn't made enough progress yet and has a long way to go but there's more of a ray of hope for her now than there was earlier in the year.

The Republican legislature has undoubtedly helped Perdue's prospects. Asked whether voters have more faith in her or them to lead the state the Governor comes out on top by a 44-41 margin. In February the GOP led 44-37 on that question. They've proven to be a good foil for her and things are moving in her direction, if slowly. It just remains to be seen if she can continue that progress over the next 14 months and change.

Full results here

5 comments:

Matt D said...

You've run out of things to say, haven't you?

Matt D said...

I have another question. If she's been unpopular pretty much since she took office, how did she get elected to begin with?

Did something huge happen in early 2009 to crash her popularity, or was it a spur-of-the-moment, huge partisan wave a la Rick Scott in 2010?

Anonymous said...

Thirteen percent more Democrats surveyed. Does that not impact your results?

bfen said...

Matt D...

She just barely won in 2008, mostly because Obama made such a big push to win the state. She has never been that popular and she will definitely need Obama's help to win again in 2012. Plus, McCrory's always been sort of well-liked.

Dustin Ingalls said...

"Thirteen percent more Democrats surveyed. Does that not impact your results?"

That's North Carolina for you. We and the exit polls both had it as Dems +11 in '08, which is essentially the same thing when you take the MOE into account.

 
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