#ncsen2026: The Name Game
We already told you about the latest poll by Carolina Journal and Harper Polling. It’s another ugly one for Mike Whatley. And Carolina Journal absolutely DIGS Whatley !!!
If you read deeper down into the poll findings, you’ll see a deeper long-term problem for Whatley. Political pros will tell you time and again how important Likability and Name ID are to electoral success. This graphic here illustrates what the poll found on those two factors for each candidate:
A total of 52.7 percent of respondents have either Never Heard Of Michael Whatley or have No Opinion of him. Whatley has been out there since July campaigning. That leaves a lot of room for Team Cooper to define him.
Whatley has been the North Carolina Republican Party chairman AND the Republican National Committee chairman. But think about it: How many of you out there can name the current NCGOP state chairman, the current RNC chairman, the current NC Democrat Party chairman, and the current DNC Chairman? Or even your county GOP or Democrat chairmen, for that matter?
I’m sure there are some political animals out there who can rattle off all of those names on command. But that’s a small sliver of the overall electorate. The overwhelming majority of voters would look at you really funny if you asked them to name any of those people. That kind of stuff is just not on the radar of the average voter.
Let’s look at Whatley’s Favorable vs. Unfavorable numbers. A total of 25.3 percent find him Very favorable or Somewhat favorable.
Over on the other side of that equation, we find 21.9 percent that see him as Very Unfavorable or Somewhat Unfavorable.
That’s waaaaaaaaaaaaay too close for comfort and not nearly enough to win an election.
Let’s move over to Roy Cooper. (Remember, this is from a poll paid for by some big fans of the Raleigh GOP establishment.)
Only 11.7 percent of respondents had either Never Heard Of Roy Cooper or had No Opinion of him.
Let’s look at Cooper’s Favorable vs. Unfavorable numbers. A total of 49.9 percent find him Very favorable or Somewhat favorable.
Over on the other side of that equation, we find 38.5 percent that see him as Very Unfavorable or Somewhat Unfavorable.
The Very Favorable respondents for each side are going to be really hard to pull away from their respective candidate choices. You might have some luck with attack ads on the Somewhat Favorable group.
Right now, the folks that have never heard of either candidate are not likely to show up at the polls. Though, a well-executed media strategy and GOTV effort might pull some in that group to one side or another.
The 38.5 percent unfavorable number for Cooper is where the Whatley team has to train their fire. Make it bigger. Unfortunately, Team Whatley has to first eat into that 52.7 percent that either don’t know or have no opinion of their man. Get that number down quick. (This poll was done May 10-11.)
Time is growing short in this campaign season. We’re getting into the summer vacation months where few people are really paying attention to elections. It’s long been said that campaign season really starts at the end of Labor Day weekend. That leaves us September and October.
With numbers like what we see here with this poll — and the large deficit for Whatley we see here and in other polls – is there enough time to turn this around and produce a Mike Whatley victory?
