Carter Wrenn posted on May 24, 2011 11:16
The North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation has been studying the polls in the Governor’s race and after adding them all up and averaging them together it’s issued a report saying Pat McCrory leads Governor Perdue 50% to 38% – which is no surprise as the Governor’s been in hot water in one way or another since taking office.
But there’s a bit of illusion in McCrory’s lead – as the NCFEC points out.
These polls show McCrory winning 20% of the African-American vote. Which may be true. But as NCFEF noted the ‘Exit Polls’ in 2008 showed he won just 2% of the votes of African-Americans.
So what happens if McCrory’s support among African-Americans vanishes? Suddenly he leads Bev Perdue 46% to 43%.
That’s still not bad for McCrory. In fact it’s pretty good. But it’s also a warning.
A lot of Republicans think the 2010 election was a sea-change. What that number says is that may be a bad case of over-optimism.