Late-deciding voters could determine NC's next attorney general, WRAL News Poll indicates

Published October 31, 2024

Bishop, Jackson offer differing visions for North Carolina AG role

The race to be North Carolina’s next attorney general will likely be decided by voters who were still making up their minds in late October, according to the findings of a new WRAL News poll.

Democrat Jeff Jackson leads Republican Dan Bishop 44% to 42% in a poll of 853 likely voters conducted between Oct. 23 and Oct. 26. SurveyUSA conducted the poll on behalf of WRAL. That narrow margin is within the survey’s credibility interval of 4.1 percentage points.

A credibility interval is similar to a margin of error but takes into account more factors and is considered by some pollsters to be a more accurate measurement of statistical certainty.

But the poll found that 14% of voters have yet to decide who they will vote for in the race to be the state’s top law enforcement officer. The poll found that nearly one in four registered unaffiliated voters were still undecided. Jackson and Bishop are running to replace current Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who is running for governor.

“The undecided voters there, they’re either not going to vote at all or they’re just going to stick with their partisan affiliation,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “When it gets down to it, if they don’t know much about the two candidates it’s going to be generic Republican versus generic Democrat.”

In that case, Jackson could hold a slight edge: 12% of registered Democrats say they are undecided compared to 8% of Republicans.

“Even though the folks who live and breathe this stuff might find it crazy that somebody could not know who Dan Bishop is at this point or who Jeff Jackson is at this point, a lot of voters don’t know,” Cooper said. “So they’re just going to use their partisan lens to cast that final vote.”

Jackson and Bishop are current members of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Charlotte-area districts and formerly served in the state legislature.

The state’s voters have not elected a Republican attorney general in more than 125 years, though a Republican was appointed to the role briefly in the mid-1970s.

Jackson has led in two previous WRAL News polls, holding a 43%-to-36% lead in Septemberand a 41%-to-40% lead after the March primaries. Other recent polls have found a similarly tight race with Jackson holding slim leads.

More than 3.1 million voters — more than half the amount of people who voted in 2020 and nearly 40% of all registered voters in 2024 — have already cast their ballots in North Carolina as of Tuesday afternoon.

As the campaign enters its final days, Bishop said he just wants to keep getting his message out there.

“If you want your family to be safe, if you want your children, your grandchildren to be safe, there is a way to do things differently,” Bishop told WRAL earlier this month. “Woke crime policy is not the answer. The evidence is in. We can restore law and order in North Carolina.”

Jackson told WRAL earlier this month that he would spend the final days asking voters to give him a chance to earn their support.

“If you listen to what I have to say about what I want to do with this job, if you read a little bit about my record, how I’ve spent my life soldier, prosecutor, I think you’re going to see that I’ve got the qualifications,” Jackson said, “but also that I bring the temperament that we really want from an attorney general.”