Trump should worry if NC poll showing a tie with Biden is correct

President Biden and Donald Trump are in a dead heat for North Carolina, according to a new poll by Meredith College.  

Biden leads 40% to 39%, well within the margin of error of 3.5% in the poll of 755 voters.

Let’s have our obligatory acknowledgment that polls this far out are often not very predictive.

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Trump especially better hope this one is not predictive.

If this time next year, he is in a jump ball in North Carolina, he will have already lost Virginia and the swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania he needs to beat Biden in a rematch. Those states are less conservative than here.

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The poll findings are not far-fetched, either. Currently, North Carolina sends to Washington a U.S. House congressional delegation split down the middle: seven Democrats and seven Republicans. The popular vote for all 14 seats was 1,956,906 Republicansto 1,795,170 Democrats.

The GOP last month voted to change that map, replacing the court-drawn and nonpartisan districts to extremely partisan lines that could send at least 10 Republicans to D.C. and four or fewer Democrats.

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District lines however don’t matter in the presidential race — nor do they matter for governor. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is one of many in his party to serve in that role despite North Carolina’s generally red tilt, as evidenced by its GOP legislative majorities and two Republican senators.

Many voters are still undecided in governor’s race

Speaking of governor: The Meredith poll found Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein two points ahead of Mark Robinson, the Republican lieutenant governor, 38% to 36%. That is again within the margin of error and another jump ball. The poll also shows large leads for Stein and Robinson in their respective party primaries.

What the poll tells more than anything else however, is that a good part of the state has not tuned into the governor’s race. One in five respondents in a Stein-Robinson matchup said they were undecided. In the primaries, 42% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans said they were undecided on their choice.

Close races for president in NC but a GOP record of winning

There is still a lot of churn possible in the presidential contest, too, with 17% of respondents saying they preferred someone else. There are also peculiar factors that cannot be gauged in any way right now, such as the impact of Trump's 91 criminal charges and any verdicts in cases that may be decided within the next year.

In the modern era, Barack Obama is the only Democrat to win North Carolina’s electoral votes, in his first run in 2008, when he got 49.7% of the vote to Sen. John McCain's 49.38%. Since that race, the Republican winners here in the presidential race have been Romney (+2 over Obama); Trump (+3.7 over Hillary Clinton); and Trump again (+0.3 over Biden).

We can add that North Carolina Republicans, during the Trump era, have fared better than their GOP colleagues elsewhere in down-ballot races over the last few election cycles. Our state’s Republicans actually did see a kind of “red wave” in the 2022 midterms that had been predicted for the GOP nationwide but mostly fizzled. Their success includes Ted Budd winning a U.S. Senate seat and the party running the table on statewide judge races, which flipped the N.C. Supreme Court to a 5-2 GOP majority — one that has already had a major impact.

So there’s another reason to take a poll showing a Biden edge with a grain of salt. 

What we can say right now is this: The Old North State will be competitive as ever in 2024.

Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.