Raleigh, N.C. – Republican nominee Jeff Collins is leading the state House District 25 race against Democratic opponent Randy Stewart 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 most of Nash County – 45 percent of voters said that if the election for state representative were today they would vote for Collins. Thirty-seven percent said they would vote for Stewart and 18 percent said they were undecided.
Among voters who say they are definitely voting in November, Collins’ margin jumps 19 percentage points as his lead becomes 52-33 percent with 15 percent of voters undecided.
Also helping Collins’ lead are unaffiliated voters, the fastest growing voter segment in the state. Forty-seven percent of unaffiliated voters said they would vote for Collins if the election for state representative were held today. Twenty percent said they would vote for Stewart and 33 percent said they were undecided. Meanwhile, Republican support for Collins stands at 79-8 percent as Stewart leads Democrats by a 65-21 margin.
“Collins is capitalizing on the frustration among voters with the current direction and leadership of the state and nation,” said Civitas Institute Senior Legislative Analyst Chris Hayes. “The political tide is strongly in Republicans’ favor currently and is causing problems for many Democratic incumbent legislators across the state.”
Collins’ lead is unexpected as he is overall unknown in the district with only 17 percent of voters having an opinion of him (12 percent favorable, 5 percent unfavorable). Meanwhile, voter opinion of Stewart is slightly higher with just 27 percent of voters being aware of him (15 percent favorable-12 percent unfavorable).
“So far in his first term, Stewart is struggling to make himself known with voters in the district,” added Hayes. “With Stewart’s slim name identification advantage and having only run once before this seat is performing more like an open seat than one of an incumbent legislator.”
House District 25 is rated as an R+2 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 June 29-30 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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