New poll shows Biden with large lead over Trump in North Carolina
Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by nine points in North Carolina, an edge that mirrors his national advantage, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll.
Most other polls, including one released Wednesday by Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling, show a much tighter race in North Carolina, one of six states identified by both parties as a key battleground.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leads Trump 49% to 40% in the New York Times poll released Thursday morning. Trump, a Republican, won the state by nearly four points in his 2016 electoral college victory against Hillary Clinton.
In The New York Times poll, Biden leads by at least six points in those six battleground states: North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona.
The poll was conducted with 3,870 registered voters in those states from June 8 to 18.
The Times’ national poll, released Wednesday, showed Biden with a 14-point lead over Trump, 50% to 36%, a bit higher than the Democrats’ 10-point average lead.
The state-level polls comes the same day the Biden campaign announced its top staff hires in North Carolina, including picking his state director.
Biden led Trump 48% to 46% in North Carolina in a Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday and every poll result this year recorded by Real Clear Politics has fallen within the margin of error.
Last week, the Biden campaign launched television and digital ads in North Carolina and the five other battleground states seen as key to determining the winner.
Trump carried all six of those states in his 2016 Electoral College victory. He topped Clinton by about 173,000 votes.
The last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried North Carolina was in 2008, when Barack Obama, with Biden on the ticket, topped Sen. John McCain by about 14,000 votes. The Obama-Biden ticket lost North Carolina in 2012 by less than 100,000 votes.
The last time the state was decided by more than four points was in 2004 when President George W. Bush carried the state by more than 12 points on his way to re-election.
North Carolina has 15 electoral votes.
Staffing up
Biden announced his top staff in North Carolina on Wednesday, tapping Gov. Roy Cooper’s deputy legislative director L.T. McCrimmon to be his state director.
McCrimmon graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh and earned a master’s degree from North Carolina Central University in Durham. She previously worked as political director for Deborah Ross’ 2016 Senate campaign.
Maggie Thompson will be the campaign’s state advisor and chief of staff. Scott Falmlen, co-founder of Raleigh-based Nexus Strategies and former executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party, will be the campaign’s state advisor.
Bloomberg reported last week that the Biden campaign’s slow pace of state hires was troubling some Democrats, despite his big lead in national polls.
The Trump campaign has had staffers in North Carolina for more than a year.
In March 2019, the Trump campaign named Jason Simmons, who served in Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration, as its regional director for North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Bethany Hudson, a former president of the Wake County Republican Women’s Club, is the RNC’s state director. Hudson, a graduate of UNC-Wilmington, was the North Carolina director of coalitions and surrogate operations for Trump’s 2016 campaign.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 5:30 AM with the headline "New poll shows Biden with large lead over Trump in North Carolina."
