More polls: Roy Cooper STILL spanking Whatley

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Same story, different day.

Though, things are getting interesting.  Today we have one left-leaning pollster showing the race tightening and one right-leaning poll showing the race much worse for Mike Whatley.

Let’s go:

There hasn’t been a single poll indicating a Mike Whatley lead over Roy Cooper.  We’ve had one tie WAAAAAAAAAY back in July when Whatley first announced.

The two newest polls are Carolina Journal / Harper and Public Policy Polling (PPP).

PPP is a notoriously Democrat-aligned consulting firm.  Their work tends to put GOP campaigns in the worst light possible.  Yet, here they are giving the Whatley campaign a ray of hope — with results that are within the margin of error.  

Carolina Journal is a notorious apologist for the state Republican Party.  The crew on Hillsborough Street, in their eyes, can do no wrong.  THIS is a crowd you’d expect to see polling slanted in favor of a GOP candidate from. But they have been unable to produce a poll showing a Whatley lead. Their surveys for this race have found leads for Cooper ranging from 4 to 8 points. 

You’ll notice that PPP used Registered Voters (RV) for this survey instead of Likely Voters (LV).  Using Likely Voters, as Carolina Journal did, tends to give you more realistic results.  (Many Registered Voters don’t bother to go to the polls.) 

The RCP average of all of the poll results leaves us with an 8.5 point advantage for Roy Cooper. As points of reference / comparison:  Mark Robinson lost the 2024 governor’s race by 14.6 points, while Dan Forest lost the 2020 race by 4.5 percent.

The RCP average was pretty close to the final result in the 2024 governor’s race.  That year, polls by Marist and The Hill / Emerson came the closest to the final result without going over.

In the 2020 governor’s race, Emerson came the closest to predicting the final result without going over.   Sounds like we need to keep our eyes on Emerson THIS year.  (They last polled the 2026 race back in July.  They found a 6 point lead for Cooper.)