Senate race didn’t get closer

About a month ago, a spate of news headlines said “poll shows Whatley closing on Cooper” and “new poll shows NC Senate race tightening.”

Wrong.

Two more recent polls - one I worked on and one by Fox News - show Democrat Roy Cooper maintaining a 9-point lead over Republican Michael Whatley.

Fox’s poll, done July 23-27, showed Cooper ahead 53-44%.

Our poll, done July 29-August 1, had Cooper up 50-41%.

Nothing has changed in the race.

Cooper is far better known and far better liked than Whatley.

Fully 28% of voters don’t even know who Whatley is.

Donald Trump is a drag on Whatley, and Democrats are more motivated to vote than Republicans.

The “getting closer” stories stemmed from a July 10-11 survey by Public Policy Polling that had Cooper up 48-44%.

The PPP poll wasn’t wrong. It reflected a normal variation in polling results.

But it was an outlier, and the media shouldn’t overreact to one poll - and create a horserace narrative that gives a false picture of the race.

Actually, the PPP poll was helpful to Cooper. That’s why his campaign took the unusual step of emailing potential donors about the poll.

Campaigns usually don’t boast about falling behind. And they certainly don’t if they believe they’re falling behind.

Cooper’s campaign has to combat complacency and over-confidence.

He has to compete for money with Democrats running for Senate in Texas, Georgia, Alaska, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Iowa.

He can’t let donors here and across the country think he’s got it in the bag. Because he doesn’t.

Thanks to a corrupt, broken campaign finance system, Republicans can throw hundreds of millions of dollars in attack ads at him.

And, as Dr. Michael Bitzer of Catawba College observed on a Zoom call recently, “In North Carolina, the margin of victory is usually within the margin of polling error.”

Here are links to our full poll and detailed information about the methodology.

Photo: Whatley with Trump. Many voters have never heard of Whatley. But they’ve heard enough of Trump.

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