Raleigh, N.C. – Republican candidate Jimmy Dixon is leading Democratic opponent Mott Blair by 4 percent in the House District 4 race to replace the retiring Rep. Russell Tucker (D-Duplin), 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 Duplin and Onslow counties, 43 percent of voters said they would vote for Dixon if the election for state representative were today. Thirty-nine percent said they would vote for Blair, and 18 percent said they are undecided.
Dixon’s lead jumps to 51 percent-31 percent among voters who said they are most likely to vote in 2010. Additionally, unaffiliated voters are heavily backing Dixon by 63 percent-11 percent.
“House District 4 continues the trend we’ve seen across Eastern North Carolina where Republican candidates are running very strong in Democratic strongholds due to overwhelming support of unaffiliated voters,” said Civitas Institute Senior Legislative Analyst Chris Hayes. “Dixon’s lead is symbolic of this trend.”
Both candidates are relatively tied in terms of name recognition among voters. Twenty-six percent of voters have an opinion of Dixon (18 percent favorable-8 percent unfavorable), giving him a +10 net favorable rating. Forty-one percent of voters said they are neutral, and 34 percent said they have no opinion on his bid for state representative.
Meanwhile, 29 percent of voters have an opinion of Dixon (14 percent favorable-15 percent unfavorable) for a net favorable -1. Thirty-five percent of voters said their opinion is neutral, and 37 percent said they have no opinion of his candidacy.
“Republicans could pick up this seat if the unaffiliated trend toward Republican candidates continues and if Dixon is able to increase his name identification among voters in the district,” added Hayes.
House District 4 is rated as a neutral 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 August 20-22 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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