Raleigh, N.C. – In the election for North Carolina’s 45th Senate District seat, Democratic incumbent Steve Goss and Republican challenger Dan Soucek are virtually tied according to a new SurveyUSA poll released today by the Civitas Institute.
According to the poll of 350 registered voters, 43 percent said that if the election for state senator were held today they would vote for Goss. Forty-one percent said they would vote for Soucek, and 17 percent said they were undecided.
Sen. Goss is seen favorably by 34 percent of the district’s voters while only 11 percent have an unfavorable opinion. By subtracting a candidate’s unfavorable rating from his favorable rating produces a net favorable number: Goss has a net favorability of +23.
Soucek has a net favorability +8 after been seen favorably by 18 percent of voters and unfavorably by 10 percent of voters.
“District 45 is a heavy Republican leaning district and given how close the polling here is today, will be a hard fought battle until November,” said Civitas Institute Senior Legislative Analyst Chris Hayes. “The balance of power of the NC Senate in 2011 will be decided by who wins in District 45.”
Senate District 45 is rated as an R+10 district on Civitas’ NC Partisan Index. For more on the NCPI, click here.
In a demonstration of the district’s Republican leanings, when asked generically who they favored for state Legislature, Republicans were favored over Democrats by a 48-36 percent margin. Sixteen percent of voters said they were undecided.
For full results and crosstabs from the poll, click here.
The survey of 350 registered voters was taken May 8-10 by SurveyUSA on behalf of the Civitas Institute using the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) method. It carries a margin of error of 4.9%.
This SurveyUSA poll was conducted by telephone in the voice of a professional announcer. Respondent households were selected at random, using Random Digit Dialed (RDD) sample provided by Survey Sampling, of Fairfield CT. All respondents heard the questions asked identically. Where necessary, responses were weighted according to age, gender, ethnic origin, geographical area and number of adults and number of voice telephone lines in the household, so that the sample would reflect the actual demographic proportions in the population, using most recent U.S. Census estimates. In theory, with the stated sample size, one can say with 95% certainty that the results would not vary by more than the stated margin of sampling error, in one direction or the other, had the entire universe of respondents been interviewed with complete accuracy. There are other possible sources of error in all surveys that may be more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. These include refusals to be interviewed, question wording and question order, weighting by demographic control data and the manner in which respondents are filtered (such as, determining who is a likely voter). It is difficult to quantify the errors that may result from these factors. Fieldwork for this survey was done by SurveyUSA of Clifton, NJ.
###
Leave a Comment