Civitas' gubernatorial polling experiment

Today's Civitas Poll (PDF) provided us with an interesting issue experiment in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Here are 4 questions they asked (not exact wording) in this order:

If the election for governor were held today, which of the following Democrats would you support?

Moore 25%
Perdue 34%

Are you more or less likely to vote for Richard Moore if you knew he has accepted over $700,000 in contributions from those helping him manage the retirement system?

More 8%
Less 53%
No difference 20%

If you knew he has changed the investment program in the state retirement system and increased income by $4.2 billion?

More 50%
Less 16%
No difference 16%

Now that you know more, if the election for governor were held today, which of the following Democrats would you most likely support?

Moore 31%
Perdue 28%

So after explaining the recent controversy over Moore's fundraising tactics and then his response, his numbers actually went up. Jack Hawke of the Civitas Institute's explanation was that the response trumped the initial charge-- a credit to Moore and his campaign.

In our last tracking poll, a week after the story broke about Moore's fundraising, he actually gained 5 percentage points on Perdue.

I think it's safe to say that the Moore controversy did not negatively impact his campaign. Not enough people are paying attention right now (14 months from Primary Day) for this to matter, and Moore had a decent response up his sleeve anyhow.

Moore probably should be glad that Forbes Magazine broke the story now. If Forbes didn't, then some creative reporter from a NC newspaper or the Perdue campaign would've put the story together. And it would have caused more damage to Moore next Spring when voters will be paying attention.