Thursday, March 19, 2009

Burr vs. the Generic Democrat

For the first time on our North Carolina tracking poll this month we tested Richard Burr against a generic Democrat in addition to an actual prospective opponent. Burr leads 42-38.



That's actually pretty good news for Democrats because 22% of Democrats report being undecided on the generic ballot question while only 12% of Republicans are. Some folks in the party reasonably want to see who the party's actual candidate is before committing to support them but it seems likely most Democratic voters would end up voting for whoever their nominee is.



Only 11% of Democrats say they're committed to voting for Burr against their party's candidate, and with the large Democratic registration and identification advantage in North Carolina most Republicans are going to need to earn around 20% of the Democratic vote to win statewide.



So far we have tested five prospective candidates against Burr for 2010 and only Roy Cooper has outperformed the generic Democratic ballot. Here's how the folks we've tested stack up:



Candidate

Margin Relative to Burr

Roy Cooper

+5

Generic Democrat

-4

Elaine Marshall

-8

Heath Shuler

-11

Jim Neal

-14

Cal Cunningham

-19



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