Donald Trump has momentum in North Carolina, and so does Deez Nuts.
That’s according to the latest Public Policy Polling survey of North Carolina voters. Trump now has a double-digit lead over his closest opponents in the race for the GOP presidential nomination: he’s at 24 percent, with Ben Carson in second at 14 percent and Jeb Bush in third with 13 percent. Of the 17 candidates in the race, Trump and Carson – the only two candidates with no experience in elective office – were the two candidates with the biggest gains over last month.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton continues to have a wide lead: she’s at 55 percent, with second-place Bernie Sanders well behind at 19 percent. One bit of good news for Sanders: Clinton supporters have long argued that Clinton is more ‘electable,’ but Sanders matches up almost as well as Clinton against their hypothetical Republican opponents. (The downside is that both Clinton and Sanders trail most of those opponents – including Trump – albeit by very slim margins. Ben Carson is the only candidate whose lead is above the margin of error.)
Visit PublicPolicyPolling.com for all the results of their NC survey.
The numbers also suggest we should expect close races for governor and U.S. Senator next year too. Democratic attorney general Roy Cooper leads incumbent Republican governor Pat McCrory by three points, 42-39; that’s the third month in a row that PPP has found Cooper with a slight lead. PPP’s Jim Williams says McCrory tends to poll worse when the General Assembly is in session, but (in spite of their ongoing conflicts) voters seem to be lumping McCrory more and more with the GA – and that’s bad news for the governor, as the GA’s popularity rating is only 15 percent.
The race for U.S. Senate is still very uncertain: Republican incumbent Richard Burr leads all his hypothetical Democratic challengers (including Heath Shuler and Deborah Ross) by at least seven points – but Burr’s popularity rating is only 31 percent, suggesting possible vulnerability once the Democrats agree on a candidate who can then develop name recognition statewide. Williams says the numbers continue to suggest that the Senate race will turn largely on national trends: if it’s a good year for Republicans nationwide, Burr will win; if not, the Democratic candidate will likely beat him.
Jim Williams spoke with WCHL’s Aaron Keck on Thursday.
Perhaps the strangest finding of PPP’s North Carolina survey: in a hypothetical three-way matchup with Clinton and Trump, independent candidate “Deez Nuts” would get 9 percent of the vote. (“Deez Nuts” is the name provided by someone who filed to run for president with the FEC. That ‘someone’ turned out to be a 15-year-old boy in Iowa, but he’s still polling fairly well regardless.)
Perhaps a more significant (if equally serious) third-party challenge may come from Donald Trump, who says he may run as an independent if he doesn’t win the GOP nomination. If he does, it could benefit the Democrats: Hillary Clinton would win a three-way matchup with Jeb Bush and Trump, 38 to 28 to 27 respectively. (Trump would win the most independent voters, though.)
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