North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is trailing Democratic opponent Josh Stein by 14 points, according to a new poll, though many voters are still undecided in a contest that is one of the country’s most watched of the election cycle.
Forty-eight percent of voters in a High Point University/SurveyUSA poll published this week favored Stein, while 34% threw their weight behind Robinson. Eighteen percent of respondents in the battleground state said they were undecided. The poll was conducted Aug. 19 – Aug. 21 and surveyed 1,053 registered voters.
The race for the governor‘s office is a test of political strength in a state whose narrowly divided electorate includes a wave of up-and-comers.
If elected, Robinson, 55, would be the state’s first black governor. If Stein, 57, wins, he would become the state’s first Jewish governor.
Robinson, currently North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, made headlines in 2018 after his comments defending gun rights went viral.
Since then, he has gotten a coveted endorsement from former President Donald Trump.
Despite the nod, new data from AdImpact, a company that tracks political spending, found that three-quarters of the nearly $78 million spent or reserved for the governor’s race has gone to Stein, the state’s attorney general.
According to state campaign filings from July, Stein raised $13.8 million in the second quarter of fundraising for this year compared to Robinson’s $5.1 million.
In a recent fundraising letter, Robinson told supporters that “if nothing changes on the fundraising front, not only do we risk losing this race but the White House too.”
Robinson, a Republican firebrand who said a year ago he would support a total abortion ban with no exceptions (though he later said he would support a six-week ban), softened his stance even more this month. He released a campaign ad saying he supported North Carolina’s current law, which bans abortions after 12 weeks, and described how the issue was a personal one for him after his wife had an abortion in 1989.
Political scientist Michael Bitzer told WXII-12 that Robinson’s struggling campaign could ultimately end up hurting Trump’s chances in North Carolina.
“If the Republican gubernatorial candidate is sagging or performing outside of expectations relative to the top of the ticket, that therein lies some warning signs,” Bitzer said.
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Other August polls on the race, from the New York Times and the Carolina Journal, showed Stein with several-point leads outside the margin of error. The RealClearPolitics average of polls gave Stein an 8.7% lead.
Democrats have won seven of the last eight gubernatorial elections in North Carolina. The state has, however, only picked one Democrat for president in the past 50 years, former President Barack Obama in 2008.
