New Elon U. poll: Cooper 75%, Whatley 26%

Before anyone blows a gasket — those numbers represent the percentage of respondents to the poll who know at least “some” about either candidate.

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Name ID is an important part of election campaign strategy.  There is some correlation between a candidate’s name ID and their performance during the voting period.

Twenty-six percent, eh?  I’m willing to bet the name ID of Don Brown — you know, the Republican candidate *who doesn’t exist* in the GOP Senate primary the GOPe and the lazy legacy media are pretending doesn’t exist – is not far off from what polls like this are finding on Whatley. 

We’ve seen at least five public polls looking at a Cooper-Whatley matchup. They ALL have Roy Cooper winning by anywhere from four to eight percentage points. (A four-point lead in a statewide race translates to a margin of about 250,000 votes.)

Let’s shift over to fundraising.  We’re being told that Mike Whatley is a great fundraiser.  In reality, the state party – while he was chairman – had its treasury padded regularly with pass-through funds from the RNC in DC and shakedown proceeds from leadership in the legislature.  Taking credit for other people’s, um, *work.*

The latest media reports indicate Cooper has raised $14.5 million to Whatley’s $5.8 million.  Now, get a load of this:

[…] Sen. Thom Tillis had already received $7.6 million in donations for his 2026 campaign when he decided not to seek reelection.

That left him returning more campaign dollars to his donors last quarter than the fellow Republican trying to succeed him was able to raise in the same period. […] 

All of this really blows a hole in the establishment spin that Mike Whatley is the only one who can win the Senate seat.  (*From where we’re sitting, it actually looks like Roy Cooper is pretty well-positioned to win the Senate seat.*)

Oh, and speaking of Elon University.  We found a recent article they published about the GOP establishment’s effort to shove Mike Whatley down our throats that featured analysis from political science faculty member Chris Cooper:

[…] When the RNC backed Whatley, businessman Andy Nilsson and former military lawyer Don Brown were still in the race. Nilsson later dropped out, and Brown openly criticized the RNC’s choice to endorse Whatley before the primary.

“The traditional way of thinking is the party should stay out of primaries,” Cooper said. “It is the job of the party to facilitate the primary process, but not to favor one candidate over the other.”

The decision to endorse a candidate also drew backlash because Whatley was serving as chairman of the RNC when he announced his campaign for Senate.

“Certainly, people who have been head of the RNC and the DNC have run for office before, so that part is not that unusual,” Cooper said. “What’s interesting is, it isn’t like Whatley was the head of the RNC six years ago, this was, like, six days ago when they made the endorsement.”

For example, Cooper explained that former President H.W. Bush briefly served as RNC chairman between 1973 and 1974, but did not become president until 1989.

Whatley was selected by President Trump and officially appointed chairman in March 2024. He served as co-chair with Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. […]

Trump also played a major role in the RNC’s decision to endorse Whatley. Trump posted in support of Whatley on Truth Social on July 24, the same day Whatley announced his campaign.

[…]

Going forward, Christopher said the RNC’s move to endorse a candidate before the primary election may set a new precedent for the role parties play in future elections.

“It’s very possible we’re going to see parties be more aggressive in choosing primary candidates, almost like they did before the party primary reforms of the early 1970s,” he said. “It’s almost the party re-exerting the muscle that it used to have.” […]

Party primaries can be compared to scrimmage and exhibition games for college and pro athletic teams.  Teams can work out their kinks and get their game plans together before facing the competition when everything counts.  If you realize you made a mistake with personnel, you can make changes before things start to count and you’re stuck.  

The NCGOP played this same game with the 2024 governor’s race.  We all played the ‘pretend there is no primary game’ and said ‘Aaaaaaaaaaah’ while Mark Robinson was shoved down our throats.  If we had a real primary and the scrutiny that comes with it, we might all have learned about his web-surfing and his family business BEFORE we were stuck with him.