Hagan leads for the 7th time in a row

Kay Hagan 49
Elizabeth Dole 42
Christopher Cole 4

For the seventh PPP poll in a row Kay Hagan leads for North Carolina's US Senate seat, and for the third time in the last four polls that advantage is outside the margin of error.

North Carolina is a state with a large Democratic identification advantage. That means for Republicans to win here they need to take a much bigger chunk of the Democratic vote than Democratic candidates get of the Republican vote. But in this race those figures are nearly equal: Hagan is up 81-12 with Democrats and Dole is up 83-1o with Republicans. If Dole can't peel off more of the other party's voters than that she has virtually no chance of winning.

One thing helping Hagan is that she is shoring up the African American vote. Elizabeth Dole enjoyed unusual support for a Republican with them in 2002, and polled pretty well with that group throughout much of the summer. But Hagan now seems to have their vote largely nailed down, 84-7. There isn't much doubt that Barack Obama's coattails are having a strong impact here.

Hagan has nearly identical leads with both women and men, leads across three of four age groups, and has a 59-33 advantage with voters most concerned about the economy.

Hagan's campaign has been one of the best run in the country this year. I discussed that with Linda Wertheimer of NPR last week. Listen to it here.

Full results here.