Less than two weeks from the Iowa caucuses and less than two months from the North Carolina primary, the latest polls show Donald Trump still in command of the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
A Public Policy Polling survey this week shows Trump’s lead increasing in North Carolina: 38 percent of GOP voters say they’ll support him in the March 15 primary, up from 33 percent last month. Ted Cruz is a very distant second with just 16 percent; Marco Rubio is down three points to 11 percent this month, but he’s still the only other Republican candidate in double figures. (Trump also has the highest favorability rating of all the candidates, with 62 percent of GOP voters saying they approve of him.)
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton may be struggling in Iowa and New Hampshire, but she’s still holding a big and steady lead over Bernie Sanders in North Carolina. Clinton leads Sanders 59-26 among Democratic voters – bolstered partly by a 77-12 advantage among African-Americans.
As for the general election: PPP’s survey suggests that regardless of who gets nominated, the Republican will have a slight edge in November. Every potential GOP candidate leads both Clinton and Sanders by 1 to 5 points.
In the race for governor, Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper has a 43-40 lead over Republican incumbent Pat McCrory; the two candidates have been trading the lead back and forth all year, though, and PPP director Tom Jensen says he fully expects that race to be extremely close throughout 2016. The race for U.S. Senate is a bit different: Republican incumbent Richard Burr leads all of his potential Democratic opponents by 7-11 points, but Jensen says that’s partly because the Democrats – Kevin Griffin, Deborah Ross, and Chris Rey – are all largely unknown. (None of the three has more than 28 percent name recognition among North Carolinians.)
Tom Jensen discussed the survey with WCHL’s Aaron Keck.
For more numbers on the presidential race, visit this page.
For more numbers on state-level races (as well as North Carolinians’ opinions of the Carolina Panthers), visit this page.
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