Stein has 15-point lead over Robinson in race for NC governor, WRAL News Poll shows

Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein continues to lead Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson by double digits in the race for North Carolina governor, a WRAL News Poll released Wednesday shows — a marked gap, considering the race for president is tied in this battleground state.

Of 853 likely voters, 52% favored Stein, compared with 37% who favor Robinson — a one-point increase from a September WRAL News Poll. Both polls were conducted by Survey USA, in partnership with WRAL. The latest poll was conducted between Oct. 23 and Oct. 26.

Stein’s wide lead is notable in a state where the presidential race is knotted up. Voters polled for the survey were evenly split between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris in the race for president, tied with 47% support each.

The WRAL poll shows nearly one in every five Trump supporters backing Stein for governor. By contrast, just one in every 20 Harris supporters is backing Robinson.

Some Republicans had feared Robinson’s lagging support and a history of scandal could harm Trump’s chances of winning North Carolina for the third straight presidential election. But Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper says the poll shows GOP voters aren’t necessarily equating Robinson with Trump, or other Republicans on the ballot.

“Voters are sort of putting Mark Robinson in his own box,” Cooper said. “They are considering him separate from the rest of this ticket.”

Robinson has trailed Stein for months in the quest to replace term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper. But Stein’s lead has widened significantly in other polls since late September, when CNN published a report alleging that Robinson made a series of lewd and racist comments on a pornographic website more than a decade ago.

Trump, who endorsed Robinson in March, has distanced himself from the lieutenant governor since the CNN report.

Robinson has denied the allegations in the report and recently sued the network for defamation.

Down-ballot impact?

An Elon Poll, released Tuesday, showed Stein with a 21-point advantage over Robinson, up from a 14-point lead in September, before the CNN report. That poll was conducted between Oct. 10 and Oct. 17.

A Marist Poll released Thursday showed Stein’s lead widening from 11 points in September to 14 points in October. The Marist Poll, which surveyed more than 1,200 likely voters, was conducted from Oct. 17 through Oct. 22.

WRAL’s latest poll, conducted after the Elon and Marist polls — and which shows almost no change in support for either Stein or Robinson since before that CNN report — suggests that some voters who had cooled on Robinson may have moved past the allegations. And the margin could narrow come Election Day.

“When the immediacy is not there, people's attitudes tend to kind of revert back to the mean,” said David McClennan, a political science professor and pollster at Meredith College in Raleigh. “It's the idea of coming home to your party. The Robinson-Stein race will probably be a much narrower race than most people imagine, just because partisanship is so powerful in the state.”

While Robinson doesn’t appear to be hurting Trump, it’s less clear what effect he might have on other state-level contests this year.

Republicans are seeking to hold onto their supermajority in the state legislature, which would enable them to override vetoes by Stein if Stein were to win the governor’s race. But the competitive legislative districts are largely in suburban areas around Charlotte, Raleigh and Wilmington where a key issue for many voters is the future of abortion and women’s rights more broadly — factors that have also been key in the race for governor. The poll showed Stein with a 58%-to-32% overall advantage in suburban areas of North Carolina, including a 64%-to-25% edge among suburban women.

Some statewide Democratic campaigns have tried tying their Republican opponents to Robinson. The new poll results indicate those efforts largely haven’t worked.

The WRAL poll shows a neck-and-neck race in another high-profile contest on the ballot, for superintendent of public instruction. Republican Michele Morrow, a pro-homeschooling activist who was at the Jan. 6, 2021 march on the Capitol, had 42% of the vote and her Democratic opponent, former Guilford County Schools Superintendent Mo Green, had 41%. Another 17% of voters were still undecided.

McLennan said the close result in that race isn’t entirely surprising — even despite Greene’s ad campaign highlighting Morrow’s and Robinson’s similar political stances.

“We've seen, over the course of several decades, political ads have really lost a lot of impact,” he said. “Just in general, people are paying less attention to them.”

Stein winning most demographics

A fiery speaker and self-described conspiracy theorist who’s popular among evangelical Christian audiences, Robinson’s views on abortion and gay rights are outside the mainstream. His opponents in the GOP primary this spring made that point repeatedly to voters, arguing that Robinson was too extreme to win a general election. But he won the primary in a landslide.

The new poll shows Robinson failing to break the 50% mark among a single demographic analyzed, except for white men, among whom Robinson had 56% support — 9 points lower than Trump. Stein won 50% or more support from every other racial and gender group, as well as from every generation of voters.

The poll reported a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. A credibility interval is similar to a margin of error but takes into account more factors and is considered by some pollsters to be a more accurate measurement of statistical certainty.

The poll also showed Robinson has not been able to attract Black support, despite his chance to become the state’s first Black governor at a time when some political scientists have seen a degradation of support for Democratic candidates among minority voters.

Robinson had the support of 13% of Black likely voters, the WRAL poll found — the same as Trump. While North Carolina voters are overwhelmingly affiliated with the Democratic Party, some national polls have suggested weaker support for Democratic candidates, and an opportunity for Republicans.

Robinson has previously been highly critical of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Many Black leaders have strongly backed Stein who, in his role as attorney general, led a state task force on racial equity and criminal justice reforms in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests. Stein’s father is also a well-known civil rights attorney who co-founded the first integrated law firm in North Carolina.