The presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump “is Clinton’s to lose at this point,” and Democratic state Attorney General Roy Cooper “has lost the advantage he had in the past couple of weeks” against Republican incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory, according to political analyst Joe Stewart.

Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr is likely to beat back a stiff challenge from Democratic nominee Deborah Ross, and all congressional candidates should win re-election, Stewart, executive director of the North Carolina FreeEnterprise Foundation, said at an Oct. 21 election briefing.

“It seems to me relatively safe to me to say Clinton wins North Carolina” although the outcome might be closer than polls indicate, Stewart said. The RealClear Politics presidential poll average on Oct. 24 had Clinton ahead of Trump 47.4 to 45 percent in North Carolina, and 262-126 in Electoral College votes, with 270 needed to be elected.

“The Clintons have a pretty sophisticated ground game going on here, and the final few weeks of an election are really about more or less the tactical advantages a candidate has over their opponent,” so it’s hard to imagine Trump overcoming his polling deficit, Stewart said.

Clinton is “going to try to make the margin of victory much bigger here than it might be otherwise,” Stewart said.

“That seems reasonable,” said John Hood, president of the John William Pope Foundation, and chairman of the board of the John Locke Foundation, who was in attendance.

Rather than spending more time and resources in other states, Clinton and vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine will try to increase voter turnout in North Carolina to help Cooper, Ross, and other down-ballot Democrats, Hood said.

Stewart said Trump has an outside chance to turn the tables if Clinton were to have another public health scare, or if there is a bombshell revelation in the ongoing stream of negative emails that were hacked, and are appearing on WikiLeaks.

And it remains to be seen whether 2016 is “a 2008 kind of election” in which Clinton recreates a disproportionate turnout by black and young voters, or if it’s a more typical 2012 year in which the Republican candidate stirs up large numbers of “the Bubba voter,” Stewart said.

“Angry white men … don’t routinely vote in an election,” and for that reason don’t often get included in polling, Stewart said. He noted that voting bloc helped former North Carolina U.S. senator Jesse Helms in five elections in which he trailed heading into the final week of the campaign.

There is the “shy voter … who is not being honest when they are being asked by the pollsters who they’re going to vote for … so the polling might be wrong,” Stewart said.

“As distasteful as they find both of these two candidates for president,” a substantial number of voters might be waiting until election day to determine which of the two is worse, Stewart said.

“It’s never lost on me that the Brexit [‘Leave’] vote never was characterized as being anywhere close to where the final result was” because pollsters got their sampling wrong, and something similar could be happening in the presidential race, Stewart said. British voters approved withdrawing from the European Union despite polls to the contrary.

Hood said looking at polling crosstabs for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, “In North Carolina there was a consistent pattern that surprised me.”

Conventional wisdom is that Libertarian candidates pull more Republican than Democratic voters. “In this case it looked like Johnson in the race was actually helping Trump,” Hood said. In addition, Johnson voters “break for Burr and McCrory overwhelmingly.”

“They’re not Bernie Sanders voters like I thought. A lot of them are right-of-center voters who are parking their vote with Johnson” out of dislike for Trump, Hood said.

On other races, Stewart said:

  • Ross “has proven to be a stronger candidate” than people thought, and “a relatively tenacious campaigner” and fundraiser. But “the numbers seem to be shifting now in Burr’s favor.” The RealClear Politics average of polls on Oct. 24 had Burr up 45 to 41.9 percentage points. Burr needs to be more aggressive and not make any serious errors during the final phases of the campaign. As Ross runs ads trying to link Burr to Trump, Burr does not seem to be suffering fallout from H.B. 2.
  • It feels like “the momentum is shifting back towards the governor,” Stewart said of the McCrory-Cooper race. According to the RealClear Politics average on Oct. 24, Cooper was leading by 47 to 46.5 percentage points. In Stewart’s estimation, McCrory won their two debates, and Cooper blundered by falsely saying McCrory was under FBI investigation. McCrory appeared very gubernatorial in sending help to quell the Charlotte riots, boosting his approval ratings in Mecklenburg and surrounding counties. He also looked authoritative in handling the state response to Hurricane Matthew.
  • The lieutenant governor’s race between Republican incumbent Dan Forest and Democratic challenger Linda Coleman is “a very tough one to anticipate. … It probably is pretty closely tied into the governor’s race.”
  • “The independent expenditure ad war has begun.” Expect to see the volume of political ads balloon in the Supreme Court race between Republican incumbent Justice Bob Edmunds and Democrat Michael Morgan, and the four state Court of Appeals races.
  • Based on conventional voting behavior in the state’s congressional districts, and his growing belief that Republican Ted Budd “will probably prevail” against Democrat Bruce Davis for the 13th Congressional District open seat, the state’s congressional delegation will continue to have a 10-3 split favoring the GOP. “I’m not seeing or hearing anything that would indicate any of the up-ballot Trump dynamic or House Bill 2 dynamic are impacting any of these races. That’s significant.”
  • Republicans are at a high-water mark in their representation in the General Assembly, and may lose some seats, but should retain their majorities in both chambers.