The results are in from the John Locke Foundation’s Agenda 2002 poll. The lead CarolinaJournal.com feature for Friday discusses the survey’s findings on legislative issues and the approval ratings of state politicians (quick summary: they’re not good). In this space, I will write a bit about what voters told us about the U.S. Senate race between Elizabeth Dole and Erskine Bowles.
I won’t bury the lede. Our poll, taken early this week of 500 likely North Carolina voters, found that Dole has an eight-point lead over Bowles, 45 percent to 37 percent. A still-sizable 18 percent of the electorate remained undecided at three weeks out, more so than I expected. Also, Dole was below the 50 percent mark; other polls have found a similar 7-to-10 point lead for Dole but put her number closer to the magic 50 percent (with a margin of sampling error of 4.5 percent, the Agenda 2002 poll put Dole reliably below the cut-off).
The bad news for Bowles was that Dole was leading among key subgroups such as self-identified moderates and unaffiliated voters. She was basically tied with Bowles among women while scoring a strong 14-point advantage with men. Unless this trends reverse themselves, Bowles can’t pick up enough votes to make a go of it as swing voters finally declare themselves or drop out of the potential electorate in the coming days.
Some national political observers have already written off Bowles and dropped North Carolina’s Senate seat from the list of swing districts likely to tip the partisan balance. The last spate of polls — the Locke Foundation’s Agenda poll plus surveys for several media organizations — suggests that the race will be tough but not impossible for Bowles. He’s already reaped the harvest from going negative on television: he’s solidified some Democratic base voters and pulled Dole below the 50 percent mark. But he’s also worsened his image among moderates and independents who typically detest political slugfests.
I think he also may have big trouble with black voters, who are crucial to his chances of success. Naturally, he’ll win an overwhelming majority on Election Day (no good news for the Republicans on this score from our Agenda 2002 poll, in that Dole only attracted about 11 percent of black voters). The problem is that there are few compelling reasons for blacks to turn out. With no competitive elections in congressional districts favoring African-American candidates, and the still-bitter primary loss of Dan Blue, there is a risk of underperformance in this key Democratic voting bloc that could put the Senate seat well out of Bowles’ reach and imperil the Democrats’ control of the state legislature.
Assuming that Dole holds on to her lead by Nov. 5, a key question for Republicans is how her showing might affect races down the ballot. Right now, I’d have to say it doesn’t look like a major coattail effect. In the Agenda 2002 poll, Dole’s strong showing among moderates and independents wasn’t mirrored in the generic N.C. House and Senate questions, where the swings leaned towards Democrats. It was all within the margin of error, but that’s the point — Dole may have to win a more convincing victory than just a 7 or 8 point margin to indicate a GOP surge with revolutionary implications.
Saturday night’s debate at East Carolina University, which will be televised statewide, could be Bowles’ last chance to catch up with Dole. He’ll have to make her make mistakes — and I mean big ones, not flip-flops on issues of minor interest like the Family and Medical Leave Act. Dole, for her part, has to take back the key Republican-oriented messages of taxes and foreign policy that Bowles has so far neutralized. She’ll need to press him on his refusal to take a no-new-tax pledge, and may need to get more specific and more aggressive about the war on terrorism and the coming war in Iraq. North Carolina strongly supports the president’s policy (for a variety of reasons, we tend to rally more strongly behind the government during wartime than other states do). Dole needs to expose any daylight between Bush and Bowles on the issue.
Basically, the U.S. Senate race isn’t over. Not just yet.