Raleigh, N.C. – Democratic Rep. Patsy Keever is leading her Republican opponent Mark Crawford as they campaign for the state House District 115 seat, according to a new SurveyUSA poll released today by the Civitas Institute.
According to the poll of 350 registered voters in that district, comprised of Buncombe County, 54 percent of voters said if the election for state representative were held today they would vote for Keever. Thirty-four percent of voters said they would vote for Crawford, and 12 percent said they are undecided.
“Keever has a sizeable lead heading into November with generous support from base Democratic voters within the district,” said Civitas Institute Senior Legislative Analyst Chris Hayes. “Her name recognition among voters from serving on the Buncombe County Commission and previous campaigns looks to be paying off.”
Keever, who was appointed in September to fill the remainder of the term of Rep. Bruce Goforth, whom she defeated in the Democratic primary, has a +21 favorability rating (41 percent favorable-20 percent unfavorable) among voters. Twenty-five percent of voters said they are neutral, and 14 percent said they have no opinion.
Despite Crawford having served as a former state representative, he is generally unknown to a majority of voters in the district. Thirty-three percent of voters have an opinion of him (15 percent favorable-18 percent unfavorable), for a -3 favorable rating. Thirty-one percent of voters said they are neutral, and 35 percent said they have no opinion of his candidacy.
“Crawford has a difficult race ahead of him in a leaning Democratic district,” added Hayes.
House District 115 is rated as a D+7 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.
For full results and crosstabs from the poll, click here.
The survey of 350 registered voters was taken October 1-3 by SurveyUSA on behalf of the Civitas Institute using the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) method. It carries a margin of error of +/- 5.3%.
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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