General Election Poll: Senate

Elizabeth Dole 48
Kay Hagan 43

Having a contested- but not too contested- primary worked out perfectly for Kay Hagan. Her opposition was strong enough that she had to run tv ads. But it wasn't strong enough to have the resources to run attack ads against her. The result was about a month of an opportunity for Hagan to present her message largely unfiltered over the airwaves, and that's allowed Hagan to pull the closest to Dole she's been since entering the race. She had trailed by 17 points in PPP's most recent poll, taken in February.

Hagan is winning big among voters whose top issues are the economy (51-39) and the war (57-36.) Those are the biggest issues for voters in the state, but Dole leads by even larger margins on wedge issues like immigration (89-8) and moral and family values (82-10).

Hagan is running competitively in every region of the state except the mountains, where she did little or no advertising during the primary, and the southeastern part of the state.

Full results here.