Burr, McCrory lead despite low approvals
Published February 4, 2015
by Public Policy Polling, February 3, 2015.
PPP's newest North Carolina poll finds a similar story: Pat McCrory and Richard Burr have mediocre approval numbers but lead their potential opponents for reelection next year who tend to have low name recognition.
41% of voters approve of the job McCrory is doing to 45% who disapprove, numbers almost identical to his 41/46 approval spread in early January. This makes 19 polls in a row where McCrory's approval numbers have been under water. Nevertheless McCrory leads both of his potential Democratic opponents- it's a 44/39 advantage over Roy Cooper and a 44/34 one over Ken Spaulding.
There are a couple reasons for the disconnect between McCrory's approval numbers and how he matches up with Democrats. One is that the Democratic candidates aren't particularly well known. Even after 14 years as Attorney General Cooper has just 57% name recognition, and Spaulding's name recognition is only 28%. The name recognition issue leads to there being a lot more undecided Democrats than Republicans. For instance in the McCrory/Cooper match up the undecideds voted for Barack Obama by 13 points in 2012, and 22% more of them are Democrats than Republicans. That speaks to a race likely to tighten as Cooper becomes better known.
The other reason for the disparity between McCrory's approval and performance against Democrats is that he has a fair number of Republicans who don't approve of the job he's doing, but would still support him against a Democrat. McCrory's approval spread with GOP voters is 73/18, but he leads Cooper 82/9 with them. That suggests Republican dissatisfaction with McCrory comes more from the 'not conservative enough' camp than the 'he's so conservative I might vote for the Democrat' camp.
On the Senate front Richard Burr continues his usual trend of having about a third of voters (34%) who approve of him, about a third (35%) who disapprove of him, and about a third (31%) who don't have an opinion either way. He leads 5 Democrats we tested against him by anywhere from 6 to 11 points.
Full results here
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