I enjoy reading Public Policy Polling’s polls, and they were on the money in the primaries. But I question whether PPP is reading more movement in voter opinion than is really happening.

This week, PPP’s Tom Jensen said the “Yankee trash” issue has moved Eastern North Carolina voters toward Perdue and given her a 48-44 statewide lead.

Since I didn’t know what the “Yankee trash” issue was, I was surprised. And I was skeptical whether one ad, one issue could cause that much movement this late in the campaign – with so much noise over so much time.

Is it possible that weekly automated-call polls like PPP’s are like weighing yourself every hour: normal fluctuations are magnified – or even manufactured where they don’t exist?

Other polls – more expensive, more extensive and more rigorous in that they use live interviewers – suggest that nothing the campaigns are doing now is making much difference. Voters’ minds are largely made up.

If that is the case, a story in The New York Times today should give Democrats hope and Republicans pause. It says that 56 percent of the early voters so far in North Carolina have been Democrats, 27 percent Republicans and 16 percent unaffiliated. That’s a 2-1 Democratic-GOP margin.

That could be the surge that tips North Carolina to the Democrats.

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