New WRAL poll

WRAL has a new poll out, conducted by Rasmussen. They eschewed the 'church or Nascar' question from last month, it appears.

They polled a couple head to head match ups for the Governor's race and found pretty much the same results we did last week. They have Richard Moore leading Pat McCrory 39-34, the same five point margin we did last week. And they found Bev Perdue leading McCrory 42-38, a little better for Perdue than the two point she had in our poll.

When Rasmussen polled North Carolina in mid-December, McCrory led both Moore and Perdue 42-39, so this seems to be more confirmation that his campaign stumbling out of the block is hurting him. Moore has had an eight point favorable swing and Perdue has made a seven point gain.

When we've done our general election polls the percentage of undecideds with Bev Perdue pitted against the Republican candidates has always been much smaller than the percentage with Richard Moore against them, a seeming indication that like her or not, more folks have an opinion about her than Moore.

The WRAL poll confirms that. 35% of respondents have a favorable opinion of Moore and Perdue. But while 27% have an unfavorable view of Perdue, only 12% have a low opinion of Moore.

So how to explain Perdue's consistent lead in the polls for the primary? Well, first, this is a poll of general election voters instead of primary voters. But my guess is that within the population of Democratic stalwarts who have a positive view of both Moore and Perdue, more have a more favorable view of Perdue.

Republicans definitely like Moore more than Perdue. His favorable/unfavorable rating among them is 32/19. Hers is 23/42.

This post has already gotten so long I'll do a separate one on the Republicans.