Civitas: Hagan better known than Burr

One of the interesting things to come out of last week's Civitas poll was that after just a couple months in office Kay Hagan appears to have much higher name recognition than Richard Burr.

47% of North Carolinians have a favorable opinion of Hagan according to their poll with 22% holding a negative view. For Burr the numbers are 37/12.

Now obviously Hagan just came off a statewide campaign. Still, it's amazing that 20% more of the population holds an opinion about her than Burr. Has North Carolina just gotten so big that it's impossible for a senator to hold up significant statewide name recognition over the course of a six year term or is it just Burr's fault for not being visible enough?

It would be pretty outside the box but if I was Hagan I would almost consider doing a significant ad buy two or three times a year to remind North Carolinians what I was up to. It would certainly be an unusual allocation of resources but it could make things a lot easier come 2014 if she doesn't have quite as much work to do to remind people who she is. Wonder if donors would be willing to put up the money for that...