General Election: Governor

Richard Moore 41 Pat McCrory 41
Bev Perdue 41 Pat McCrory 41

Richard Moore 40 Bill Graham 31
Bev Perdue 47 Bill Graham 35

Richard Moore 39 Bob Orr 30
Bev Perdue 46 Bob Orr 33

Richard Moore 40 Fred Smith 30
Bev Perdue 45 Fred Smith 33

Pat McCrory has gone largely unscathed by his Republican opponents in the last month while Bev Perdue and Richard Moore have beaten each other up. The result is McCrory tying the Democratic front runners in the polls after trailing last month.

McCrory particularly benefits from strong support by independent voters. He leads Moore 47-28 and Perdue 48-32 with that group. He also gets stronger cross over support from Democrats than his fellow Republican candidates. While they earn 8-13% of the vote from self identified Democratic voters, McCrory gets 18-20%.

It is a virtual certainty that the Democratic nominee will emerge from the primary somewhat wounded after a bitter contest. It will be interesting to see whether Fred Smith and/or Bill Graham start spending their money soon to attack McCrory in the same way. That could be a significant determiner in who enters the general election contest as the favorite.

The poll also shows that, whether they like her or hate her, voters have a stronger opinion about Bev Perdue than they do about Richard Moore. In a contest between Graham and Moore 29% of voters are undecided while just 18% haven't made up their mind if it's Graham and Perdue. Against Orr that figure is 31% for Moore and 21% for Perdue, and versus Smith the numbers are 30% for Moore and 22% for Perdue. Perdue's closer to 50%, but Moore has more room to climb.

Full results here.