Undecideds in North Carolina

I was asked recently who the undecideds were for the major offices in North Carolina. Most of the trends remain the same as they had been in recent weeks but here's our final analysis on that issue:

Your average undecided for President at this point is a rural Democrat, probably in eastern North Carolina, who voted for Bush in 2004 but is thinking about voting for Obama because of the economy. It’s your typical ticket splitter- Republican for President and Democratic for Governor- identifying yourself as a Democrat but uncomfortable with the stance of ‘national’ Democrats on key social issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc. The conundrum for this voter: put the economy first and vote for Obama or puts values issues first and vote for McCain. The race has tightened up in the state over the last few weeks as more of those people have returned to their normal voting habits and decided to back McCain.

In both the Senate race and the race for Governor the undecideds are overwhelmingly Barack Obama supporters who don’t know what, if anything, they’re going to do on the rest of the ballot. A third of them didn’t vote for President in 2004. A plurality are independents, a lot of them are black, and a lot of them are young. They’re the kind of folks who are uniquely attracted to Obama’s candidacy and probably wouldn’t even be turning out this fall if Hillary had ended up with the nomination. There’s good news and bad news for Hagan and Perdue on this front. The bad news is that they’re voting for Obama because they like Obama- not because he’s a Democrat. So they aren’t necessarily going to be straight party voters. The good news is that among people we surveyed who already voted, more than 90% of them said they voted for Perdue and Hagan too. That’s actually a little higher than the rate of people who voted for McCain that said they would also choose McCrory and Dole.