North Carolina voters are closely divided in the choice between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a Washington Post poll, with no sign that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s scandal-plagued campaign for governor has diminished Republican enthusiasm for the former president.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, the poll finds that 50 percent of North Carolina likely voters support Trump, while 48 percent support Harris. That is within the poll’s error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points but also similar to Trump’s 1.3-percentage-point victory margin in 2020, the narrowest of any state won by the former president that year.
North Carolina has not voted for a Democratic nominee since Barack Obama won the state by three-tenths of a percentage point in 2008. But the state has emerged as a battleground this year, particularly after President Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign and Harris became the Democratic nominee.
In the race for governor, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein leads Robinson by 54 percent to 38 percent among likely voters, with a sizable 8 percent saying they have no opinion or would not vote in the election for governor, including 15 percent of Republicans.
Most interviews in the telephone survey were conducted last Wednesday and Thursday, before Hurricane Helene brought torrential rains to the Southeast, leaving at least 35 people dead in North Carolina, along with widespread power and cellphone outages. Western parts of the state were hit particularly hard, requiring supplies to be airlifted to residents in Asheville, where damaged roads have cut off most routes into the mountain city.
Turnout motivation is high across party lines, with 93 percent of registered Republicans and registered Democrats saying they are certain to vote. An 84 percent majority of Republicans say they are extremely motivated to turn out, slightly higher than the 78 percent of Democrats who say the same.
Robinson’s campaign has been upended in the nearly two weeks following a CNN report alleging that he made lewd and racist remarks on a pornographic website between 2008 and 2012. Robinson has denied making the comments. The poll finds 41 percent of North Carolina voters believe Robinson made the lewd and racist comments, 15 percent think he did not, and 40 percent say they are unsure.
Robinson is deeply unpopular after the episode, with 30 percent of registered voters having a favorable view of him, while 52 percent have a unfavorable impression and 16 percent report having no opinion. Fewer than half of registered Republicans are favorable (48 percent), while 27 percent are unfavorable and 22 percent have no opinion.
Stein enjoys net positive favorability in the state, with 46 percent of registered voters rating him favorably, 27 percent unfavorably and 26 percent having no opinion. Almost 2 in 10 Republicans have a positive impression of Stein.
About 3 in 10 voters (29 percent) say Robinson’s alleged comments are “extremely important” in their choice for governor. A larger 49 percent say that whether the governor is Republican or Democratic is extremely important to them.
The two candidates’ views on abortion also are affecting the campaign for governor. Robinson is a staunch opponent of abortion and has made extreme comments on the issue, while Stein is a strong supporter of abortion rights. The poll finds 37 percent of voters say Robinson’s views on abortion are extremely important in their choice for governor, while 32 percent say the same for Stein’s abortion views.
Overall, 59 percent of North Carolina voters say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 32 percent say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
Fewer than 4 in 10 voters in the state say abortion is extremely important to their presidential vote (37 percent), and Harris has a slight edge over Trump on the ability to handle the issue: 46 percent to 41 percent.
North Carolina voters rate protecting American democracy, the economy, and crime and safety as the three issues most important in their voting decision for president. Trump is seen as better equipped to handle the economy and crime and safety, while voters are about evenly divided on whether he or Harris would do a better job protecting democracy.
Trump’s strongest advantage is on the issue of immigration, by a margin of 17 percentage points (54 percent to 37 percent). But about as many, 45 percent, say that health care is an extremely important issue, and North Carolina voters are split over whether Trump or Harris would better handle the issue. They are also split on who can better help middle-class voters.
Male voters in the state prefer Trump to Harris by a single-digit margin, while female voters are roughly split in their support.
Six in 10 White likely voters in North Carolina support Trump, while about 8 in 10 Black likely voters support Harris.
Geographically, Trump enjoys his strongest support in the western, piedmont and central parts of the state, with about 6 in 10 likely voters saying they would vote for the former president.
Trump also has support from 54 percent of likely voters in the eastern part of the state, while Harris enjoys 55 percent support from voters in the Charlotte area and 59 percent in the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle. Harris leads by a 31-point margin in urban counties, while Trump has a nine-point edge in suburban counties and leads by 17 points among voters in small towns and rural counties.
Virtually all 2020 Trump voters support Trump again (97 percent) along with a roughly similar share of Biden’s 2020 voters supporting Harris (95 percent).
In all, over half of North Carolina voters say Biden won the 2020 election “fair and square” (54 percent), while 35 percent think he won because of voter fraud and 11 percent have no opinion. There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in North Carolina or elsewhere in 2020, with such claims repeatedly debunked or rejected by courts.
Fully 99 percent of North Carolina likely voters who believe the false claim that Biden won because of voter fraud support Trump. About 9 in 10 of those who say he won fairly are supporting Harris. Among those who say they are not sure whether the 2020 election was fair, 90 percent support Trump this year.
North Carolina voters are somewhat more conservative on immigration than their neighbors in Virginia to the north. In the Tar Heel State, 48 percent of voters say that most undocumented immigrants in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, while 44 percent say they should be deported to the countries they came from. In a Post-Schar School poll taken in Virginia in early September, just over half (52 percent) said undocumented immigrants should be offered a chance to stay, and 39 percent said they should be deported.
North Carolina voters are also slightly less trusting of their state’s vote-counting abilities than their neighbors to the north. In North Carolina, 77 percent say they are at least somewhat confident that votes will be counted accurately this fall; in Virginia, 82 percent were confident. But confidence was weaker in a mid-September Post poll of Pennsylvania voters, where 67 percent said they were at least somewhat confident in their state’s counting accuracy.
This Washington Post poll, conducted Sept. 25-29, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for both the overall sample and the sample of likely voters; all registered voters were assigned a probability of voting to produce likely voter results. The survey was conducted among 1,001 registered voters randomly sampled from a statewide voter database. Sixty-two percent of interviewees were reached by live callers to cellphones, 16 percent were reached on landlines, and 22 percent were completed online via a text invitation.