Campaign 2026 new polls: Davis up SEVEN, Cooper up SIX
We’re here in campaign crunch time. Voting is about to start. Pollsters tend to shift their strategies about this time. Many pollsters tend to shape their surveys to benefit whomever is paying the bill. As a result, early on in a campaign, you’ll get polling all over the place.
As the campaign starts to wind down and the voting gets started, pollsters tend to sharpen their pencils when conducting and producing their surveys. There is a friendly competition out there to see who can get the closest to the actual, final result. *Folks DO want to get hired for the next election cycle.*
In the 2024 Stein-Robinson matchup for governor, the Stein victory margin was 14.6 percent. East Carolina University (15%, 10/24-10/29), Marist (14%, 10/17-10/22) and something called Atlas Intel (15%, 10/24-10/29) proved to be the closest and most accurate in the end.
Of those three, only East Carolina has publicly polled in the 2026 Senate race. They showed, from 8/31-9/3, a 52-44 lead for Roy Cooper.
In late 2023, ECU had Robinson leading Stein by 4 percent. In late May 2024, ECU had Stein leading by one percent.
In 2026’s big statewide race, the Trafalgar Group has released a poll showing Roy Cooper leading Mike Whatley by SIX percent. Their survey has Cooper leading every age group. They have Cooper leading with women by nearly 20 percent. Whatley leads Cooper with men by 8.4 percent.
This is Trafalgar’s first public venture into 2026 North Carolina politics. They last polled the 2022 general election race between Ted Budd and Cherie Beasley. Trafalgar’s 2022 survey (11/4-11/6) had Budd beating Beasley by SIX percent. (He actually won by 3.2 percent.)
However, in June and September of 2022, Trafalgar released polls showing Budd with a THREE point lead.
The Democrat-aligned House Majority PAC has also released a poll on one of the most-watched House races in the state: NC-01, featuring incumbent Don Davis (D) and challenger Laurie Buckhout (R). THAT internal poll shows Davis with a 50-43 lead over Buckhout. Hitting the 50 percent mark this late in the game is typically a good sign for a campaign. But the district was redrawn to favor a Republican, and the DC GOPe still has plenty of money to spend.
About the same time, financial reports were showing each campaign neck-and-neck in the fundraising battle.
