Raleigh, N.C. – In the election for North Carolina’s 8th Senate District seat, Republican candidate Bill Rabon is leading the race against Democratic opponent David Redwine by 15 percent according to a new SurveyUSA poll released today by the Civitas Institute.
According to the poll of 350 registered voters, 50 percent said that if the election for state Senator were held today they would vote for Rabon who is campaigning to replace retiring Democratic Sen. R.C. Soles. Thirty-five percent said they would vote for Redwine, and 15 percent said they were undecided.
Rabon’s lead is built among strong support from unaffiliated voters where he leads Redwine by a 51 percent-28 percent margin. Also, despite a competitive primary, Rabon has been able to rally the Republican base vote with 87 percent of Republicans saying they would vote for him.
“While this district leans slightly Republican, Rabon has been able to open a significant early lead due to the boost in his name identification as a result of the primary,” said Civitas Institute Senior Legislative Analyst Chris Hayes. “Unaffiliated voters are breaking heavily to Republican candidates across North Carolina, and Rabon is benefiting from this momentum.”
Senate District 8 is rated as an R+3 district on Civitas’ North Carolina Partisan Index – an index that rates the relative partisan voting habits of individual legislative districts. For more on the NCPI, click here.
Rabon is seen favorably by 33 percent of the district’s voters while only 14 percent have an unfavorable opinion. Subtracting a candidate’s unfavorable rating from his favorable rating produces a net favorable number: Rabon has a net favorability of +19
Redwine has a net favorability +7 after having been seen favorably by 20 percent of voters and unfavorably by 13 percent of voters.
“As Redwine reintroduces himself to voters in the district, this race will get much closer. Given how important this race is in determining the balance of power of the NC Senate in 2011, this race will be very interesting to watch this fall,” added Hayes.
Bipartisan support remains high in favor of drilling for oil and natural gas off the coast of North Carolina. Sixty-one percent of voters support offshore drilling while 28 percent said they oppose it. Eleven percent said they were unsure. Further analysis reveals that 76 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats support oil exploration off the state’s coastline.
For full results and crosstabs from the poll, click here.
The survey of 350 registered voters was taken May 15-17 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.
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