Tracking Poll Monday

We'll have our new Democratic tracking poll Monday.

I don't see any reason things would have changed much in the race for President or Senate from last week. The word from Kay Hagan that she has over a million dollars in the bank is pretty significant for further on down the road. I've said several times that if she does a significant ad buy and Jim Neal doesn't I think she'll win by 20 points or more. This is confirmation she has the cash to do it, now we'll just see if she has a little more sense than Fred Smith with her money.

I'm beyond trying to predict what's going to happen in the Democratic gubernatorial race on a week to week basis. I think the ad Bev Perdue rolled out this week is better than her previous ones. It's a little more on point in its criticisms of Richard Moore and does a good job of tying positive information about her endorsements into the end of the ad as a sort of complement to the negative stuff about Moore.

That said, I still think the Perdue campaign needs to do a better job of showing how Moore's tenure as Treasurer has hurt average North Carolinians (if that's the theme they're trying to project.) There's not much in there to strike folks at a personal level. There aren't that many voters in NC who have a deep and abiding hatred of Wall Street.

Moore's ads continue to be very sharp as well. He's done a good job of staying on this new theme of populism that he has successfully projected over the last month. Accusing Perdue of 'caving into special interests' and producing 'tax cuts for the wealthy' fits in well with previous ads focusing on affordable college tuition, minimum wage, etc. No wonder we found last week that those who like John Edwards like Richard Moore.

I think his ads are more of a stretch factually when he tries to project the whole state budget onto Perdue or talks about investigations into her campaign finances that she was ultimately cleared for. The reality in politics though is that the truth is what you can get people to believe. Moore's ads are accurate enough that the stations aren't pulling them off their air and so far they seem to be effective in painting a pretty sinister picture of Perdue. At least that's what our numbers are saying.

It'll be interesting to see where things stand.