North Carolina 1 Poll: Down Ballot Democrats Ahead
October 3, 2024 · 2:45 PM EDT
North Carolina’s one remaining swing district looks headed for a photo finish at the presidential level, but Democrats in down-ballot races begin the fall with advantages, according to a new poll conducted by Noble Predictive Insights for Inside Elections.
In the Tar Heel State’s 1st District, Democratic Rep. Don Davis holds an advantage over his GOP opponent, retired Col. Laurie Buckhout, but neither candidate is particularly well known in the rural eastern North Carolina area.
It’s a different story for Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP’s nominee for governor, who is well known but disliked in the wake of a damaging CNN report on his past racist social media posts.
The Sept. 24-30 survey also showed leads for Democratic candidates in the races for state attorney general and superintendent of schools, albeit with a large number of undecided voters.
While much of the poll was conducted before Hurricane Helene hit the state, the natural disaster did prolong the fielding process from the typical three days to six days. It also introduced the potential for some novel nonresponse bias. “There is no way to know,” said Noble Predictive Insights data chief David Byler, “if the respondents we did get – during the hurricane and in the run-up to it – are systematically different from normal likely voters in some meaningful, unmeasured way.”
With those caveats in mind, here are the results for the latest NPI/Inside Elections House Battleground poll.
The Lay of the Land
The 1st District sits in the northeastern corner of the state. It extends from the eastern Raleigh suburbs north, wrapping around Greenville and stretching east to the Atlantic Ocean, where the Virginia Beach exurbs have expanded down the coastline.
The seat is largely rural, and while its voting-age population is majority white, Black voters make up about 40 percent of the district. The area is old — with significantly more seniors than average — and poor.
Historically, the 1st was a Democratic district, but the seat has drifted toward Republicans over the past decade. In 2016, Hillary Clinton would have won it by 4 points; in 2020, Biden would have carried it by just 1 point. That same year, unsuccessful Senate candidate Cal Cunningham would have carried the seat by 3 points, but two years later, Democratic Senate candidate Cheri Beasley lost it by 6 points.
In fact, while all but one statewide Democratic candidate would have carried the district in 2016, 2018 and 2020, in 2022 the seat voted exclusively for Republican candidates.
The House Race
In the toss-up House race, Davis led Buckhout by 6 points, 42-36 percent. Another 22 percent of voters were undecided.
In 2022, Davis won his first election by 5 points against a flawed GOP opponent. But that was in a more favorable seat. His new district, redrawn by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 2023, is about 6 points more Republican.
The redraw removed Democratic Pitt County from the district and added conservative areas on the coast. As a result, Davis’s name ID is lower than one might expect from an incumbent and longtime officeholder: 38 percent of voters view him favorably compared to 21 percent unfavorably.
Buckhout is less well known and less popular, with 23 percent expressing a favorable opinion of her compared to 28 percent viewing her unfavorably.
A steep Democratic spending advantage may explain much of the disparity. Over the past two months, Davis and his allies have outspent Republicans on the airwaves $9 million to $3 million. And Republicans have almost exclusively run negative ads against Davis — $2.7 million of that $3 million — rather than work to build up Buckhout’s image.
Republicans could approach spending parity in the 1st District over the final weeks of the race if the Congressional Leadership Fund commits the $6.4 million it currently has reserved across the seat’s media markets to this race.
The Presidential Race
At the top of the ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump are essentially deadlocked, with the Democrat leading by a negligible 47-46 percent. That mirror’s Joe Biden’s win over Trump in the 2020 election, and points to a close presidential race statewide.
The addition of Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian nominee Chase Oliver does little to change the results. Harris led a multiway ballot by 1 point, 46-45 percent.
Harris and Trump are both seen equivalently by the district’s voters. Trump is viewed favorably and unfavorably by 47 percent of voters each, while Harris is viewed favorably and unfavorably by 48 percent of voters.
The Gubernatorial Race
The strongest Democrat may be state Attorney General Josh Stein, who led the gubernatorial contest by 9 points, 45-36 percent, over Robinson, the embattled lieutenant governor.
CNN’s reporting appears to be taking a toll on Robinson, who has denied the allegations that he referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” disparaged Martin Luther King, Jr., and used racial and antisemitic slurs.
Robinson was seen favorably by just 30 percent of the district’s voters; 52 percent viewed him unfavorably. Just 60 percent of the district’s Republicans had a favorable opinion of him (compared to 95 percent for Trump). And 70 percent of the information voters heard about Robinson recently was negative.
Conversely, Stein is relatively popular in the district, with 42 percent of voters seeing him favorably compared to 22 percent unfavorably.
Down Ballot Contests
The poll also tested races for state attorney general and state superintendent of education.
The attorney general race pits two sitting members of Congress against each other: Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson and GOP Rep. Dan Bishop. Jackson nominally led the matchup, 39-36 percent, but a quarter of voters were undecided. Neither candidate is well-known; both of their name IDs sat at 28 percent districtwide.
In the superintendent race, Republican Michele Morrow has attracted national controversy for her repeated calls to have prominent Democrats, including former president Barack Obama, executed on live TV. She trails Democrat Mo Green by 9 points, 40-31 percent, with 30 percent of voters undecided.
This poll was conducted via text-to-online and live caller. The survey was completed by Noble Predictive Insights from September 24-30, 2024. We contacted a random sample of registered voters in North Carolina’s 1st district using the voter file and determined likely voters via screening questions. The sample size was 404 likely general election voters. The sample was weighted by age, gender, ethnicity, subregion, education, and recalled vote to reflect the projected 2024 electorate. Numbers may not equal 100% due to rounding. The margin of error was +/- 4.9%. Non-response, coverage error, and other factors may also contribute to error. Full crosstabs available here.
NOTE: Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina while this poll was in the field – dramatically lowering response rates, lengthening field time and potentially introducing novel forms of error that cannot be adjusted for using standard techniques.