A note on the Governor's race

An admitted Richard Moore supporter is basically accusing PPP of being in the tank for Bev Perdue over on the Under the Dome blog.

The only evidence that has been presented for this assertion, made several times by people associated with their campaign now, is that our former Communication Director now works on the Perdue campaign and that our analysis of polls tends to be more favorable to Perdue than Moore.

This Governor's race is a great example of how silly the former assertion is. Four years ago Mac McCorkle and Jay Reiff worked closely together to reelect Mike Easley. Now they're working for two campaigns that seem to pretty much hate each other. They went in total opposite directions in this race. Just because someone who used to work here is for Perdue doesn't mean that Dean or I am.

To be quite honest, if the primary was today, I would not be able to bring myself to vote for either Moore or Perdue because I've been so disgusted by the tenor of their campaigns. I'd either write in Roy Cooper, who I wish had run this year, or Jim Hunt, who we could always use eight more years of!

On the latter accusation the cold hard reality is that Richard Moore is getting beat pretty bad in everyone's polls. So when I analyze them in various ways, it's going to tend to be more positive for Perdue.

When we do polls that are better for Moore, we say that. For instance:

The big winner here is Richard Moore. Not only does he now lead all four Republicans after trailing Bill Graham and Pat McCrory last month, but he also leads most of them by a greater margin than Bev Perdue does.

That's what I wrote after we released our general election match up poll for Governor last month. Moore was doing better than Perdue, and that's what I said. That quote was picked up by the N&O. And if he starts doing better in polls for the primary, I'll talk about that as well.

If there is something missing in the way I am analyzing polls, trends being shown by some subset of the electorate that would benefit Moore, people should feel free to e-mail and tell me that and if it's something compelling I'll blog about it.

The bottom line is that it is note worthy that Perdue is making greater strides in places where tv has been running than Moore is. It is note worthy that increased black and female turnout would appear to benefit Perdue. But if I am missing note worthy things that would be good for Moore, I want you to let me know so that I can write about it.

It gets on my nerves when people question our integrity, but we're just going to plow forward giving our opinions about the way the Governor's race is going, releasing the numbers the way they come out and telling people what we think it all means. We'll do it in a fair and even handed fashion, just like we have been since the outset.