Iffy Cowell Poll

Janet Cowell's campaign is touting a poll showing her with a 32-25 lead, a result at odds with our two polls on the race, which have shown her trailing opponent Bill Daughtridge by either one or two points.

It's not very hard to figure out where the discrepancy between this poll and ours is coming from- her pollsters claim that Democrats in North Carolina have a 21 point party ID advantage- 53% Democratic, 32% Republican, and 16% Independent.

The registration advantage in North Carolina is 45-33 Democratic. Typically the party ID has trended more in a Republican direction. Although the 2004 exit poll was flawed, it is still worth noting that it showed 40% of voters identifying themselves as Republicans and 39% as Democrats.

In PPP and SurveyUSA's last five polls we have found a Democratic party id advantage ranging anywhere from 8 to 16 points, with the average around 12 or 13.

Anzalone Liszt is a very good pollster and I hope they're just seeing something we don't, but a 21 point Democratic party id advantage in North Carolina strains credulity.

We'll have our own, possibly more realistic, numbers on the race tomorrow.