New polls, same general expectations from North Carolina voters
(The Center Square) – Two polls this month show little to no change in the biggest races for the March Super Tuesday primaries among North Carolina voters.
Front runners, respectively, are Attorney General Mark Stein in the Democratic governor’s primary, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson in the Republican governor’s primary and former President Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary.
The polls are by Meredith College and Capen Analytics. The Meredith poll was conducted about a week ago, between Sept. 16-19, with full results released Monday. Capen’s poll was conducted Sept. 1-9 and released Sept. 14.
North Carolina is one of 14 states with a primary on Super Tuesday. The others are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.
Meredith’s poll, in addition to the GOP presidential primary and both major parties’ primaries for governor, asked questions about identification of political leaders in North Carolina, and about abortion and its impact on voting in 2024.
Two-thirds of respondents said abortion issues would motivate them to head to the polls. The state’s new law, restricting legal abortions to 12 weeks or less with some exceptions, had 47% approval and 45% disapproval.
Only the governor, at 80%, was identifiable to more than half the respondents. Less than 1-in-5 were able to name the leaders of the General Assembly chambers or those running for governor other than Robinson.
Democrats are mostly undecided (46%) in their choice for governor. Those choosing like Stein by a 3-to-1 margin over recent newcomer to the race Mike Morgan. Similarly, Republicans without a choice yet are at 44% and those choosing like Robinson (34%). No other candidate got more than 7%.
In the Capen poll of GOP voters, Robinson drew 61% to 12% for former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker. Only 15% said they were undecided.
Meredith had 801 responses, saying it gave a confidence interval of +/- 3.5%. Capen’s sampling is of 3,000 “likely Republican Primary voters” and has a margin of error of +/- 4.57%.
