North Carolina Rasmussen Poll

Rasmussen Reports has the results of a new North Carolina poll:

They tested the presidential race for the general election, but only with Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee:

Rudy Giuliani 44 Clinton 39 (two weeks ago we had it 46-39)
Mike Huckabee 46 Clinton 39 (we had it 48-42)
John McCain 45 Clinton 40
Clinton 42 Mitt Romney 40 (we had Romney ahead 46-42)

They also tested the gubernatorial race, only with Pat McCrory as the Republican nominee:

McCrory 42 Richard Moore 39 (we had him up 38-36)
McCrory 39 Bev Perdue 36 (we had Perdue up 41-39)

This is just another piece of confirmation that McCrory would be the strongest GOP candidate in the general election. But I don't think he will win a primary dominated by conservative voters.

I am a little skeptical of their numbers on the US Senate race. For one thing, they have Elizabeth Dole with a 58% favorable rating. That is way better than any other recent poll has showed her with. PPP and Research 2000 both showed her favorable rating last week at 46%.

In a matchup with Kay Hagan, they have her leading 55-35. This is also much better than both PPP and Research 2000 showed- we had it at 51-39 and Research 2000 had it at 46-39.

Hard for me to do much analysis of this poll because they didn't provide their wording for the horse race questions (did they describe the candidates' background or current positions in any way?) and also because they did not provide crosstabs so we have no idea what the partisan background of their sample was.