Raleigh, N.C. – In the election for North Carolina’s 50th Senate District seat, Democratic incumbent John Snow and Republican challenger Jim Davis are virtually tied according to a new SurveyUSA poll released today by the Civitas Institute.
According to the poll of 350 registered voters, 44 percent said that if the election for state senator were held today they would vote for Davis. Forty-three percent said they would vote for Snow, and 13 percent said they were undecided.
“From these results, it appears Sen. John Snow is going to be in a dogfight for reelection in this critical swing district,” said Civitas Institute Senior Legislative Analyst Chris Hayes. “This district will be a battleground district for control of the NC Senate.”
Senate District 50 is rated an R+6 district on Civitas’ NC Partisan Index, meaning it leans heavily Republican. For more information on the NCPI, click here.
Davis’s slight lead is remarkable given his very low name identification in the district with only 18 percent of voters having an opinion of him (11 percent favorable, 7 percent unfavorable). Conversely, Sen. Snow is quite well known in the district, with 34 percent of voters having a favorable opinion, 21 percent with an unfavorable opinion.
Analyzing the generic ballot, respondents were asked if the election were held today, would they be voting for the Republican or Democratic candidate for state Legislature. Among all respondents, regardless of their likelihood to vote, Republicans were favored over Democrats by a 50-36 percent margin. Fourteen 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 9-11 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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