Civitas Governor Numbers

-Civitas has its newest numbers for Governor out. On the Republican side they show a pretty similar picture to us- Pat McCrory leading Fred Smith by about ten points with Bill Graham and Bob Orr pretty much out of the picture. On the Democratic side they have Richard Moore leading Bev Perdue by one point, 37-36.

A key difference between their poll and our most recent poll that explains at least some of that is they have the African American vote at 28% for the primary while we have it at 36%. That's a demographic that goes strongly for Perdue, and it's safe to say she'd be leading if they had it at the same level as us. I don't know who's right and who's wrong on that count, that's why we have the election.

They also have their electorate much older than we do. They have 17% of primary voters between 18-44, we have somewhere around 40% in that same age group. Perdue's leading that group by about ten points in their poll.

This is an interesting case study in how polls can show different results. I imagine that those who responded to our most recent poll and those who responded to theirs gave pretty much the same answers. But the major differences in the racial and age composition of our polls can lead to us showing Perdue up by 8 and them showing Moore up by 1.

The reason we can do this sort of comparison is that Civitas released their topline demographics. Kudos to them for that.