The following is the third installment this week of the NC FreeEnterprise Foundation's About the Capital. In this edition, we examine the status of the state's hotly contested Governor's race. Earlier in the week, we released reports on voter registration changes in the state as well as an update on the presidential race. Stay tuned for future reports on congressional, Council of State, statewide judicial and state legislative races, as we do our very best to keep you informed and up-to-date heading into the home stretch of the 2012 election season.

 

Gubernatorial Polls: Republican and former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has led in every publicly available poll against Democratic Lt. Governor Walter Dalton in the race for Governor. In the polls taken since the beginning of September, McCrory is averaging close to 50 percent support, while Dalton has failed to break into the 40 percent range. In many ways this is not surprising, due to the late start Dalton got in this race after Gov. Perdue's announcement in January that she would not seek a second term. McCrory had been raising money and traveling the state for over a year at that point in preparation for a second bid for the Governor's mansion. Although Dalton has served as Lt. Governor since 2008 and had been gearing up for a statewide re-election effort, his relatively late entry into the Governor's race, coupled with the fact that the Lt. Gov.'s post is a fairly low-profile position, created a serious challenge, especially with respect to campaign finances and statewide name ID.

In many of the polls listed in the chart below that show a sizeable McCrory lead, President Obama and Mitt Romney remain neck and neck, indicating that many voters plan to split their tickets in these races. In order to narrow the gap, Dalton must win over Obama supporters who, at present, appear to be inclined to vote for McCrory, and then some. That is a tall order with less than four weeks remaining in this campaign, and even that is far from a guarantee of victory.

Gubernatorial Campaign Finances: Dalton's relatively poor performance in public polls thus far can be traced, in large part, back to his campaign finance challenge. At the end of the Second Quarter of 2012, which is the latest official campaign finance information available, Dalton had just over $714,000 cash on hand, while McCrory had nearly $4.4 million. McCrory's campaign also recently announced  that they had raised at least $3.1 million in the Third Quarter, an improvement over the $2.2 million McCrory took in during the Second Quarter. All of this adds up to Dalton being outspent, and perhaps most importantly, being out-advertized.

 

Gubernatorial Ad Spending: Unlike the presidential race, we don't yet have comprehensive ad spending figures for both campaigns and outside groups. Based on spending records filed with the FCC and media reports, however, it's safe to say that McCrory and the Republican Governors Association (RGA) are outspending Dalton and the Democratic Governors Association (which is operating as N.C. Citizens for Progress). McCrory and the RGA began running ads for several weeks over the summer, as did the DGA-backed group. McCrory and the RGA picked their advertising back up in August, but Dalton didn't begin running ads for the General Election until about a month later. A News & Observer report over the weekend indicated that the RGA was feeling so confident with McCrory's standing in the race that it planned to scale back their initial ad reservations for the coming weeks. We'll have a much more specific total of outside spending in the Governor's race as reports are filed with the State Board of Elections at the end of October, and we will be updating the NCFEF's 2012 Independent Expenditure Tracker as soon as additional outside spending figures become available.

 

Gubernatorial Surrogates: As in the presidential campaign, both gubernatorial campaigns have brought in surrogates to help campaign for them across the state, though McCrory seems to have a more steady stream. In recent weeks, McCrory's campaign has brought in GOP Govs. Chris Christie (R-NJ), Bob McDonell (R-VA), Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Nikki Haley (R-SC), and Nathan Deal (R-GA), as well as former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), to campaign on his behalf. Dalton's campaign has had former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) and DGA Chair Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-MD) make stops on his behalf in North Carolina.

 

Overall, polling data and campaign finance figures place this race solidly in McCrory's favor. Dalton is undoubtedly working extremely hard to close the gap, but time is running out, and he has a steep hill to climb. It is also important to remember there is a third party candidate in this race, Libertarian Barbara Howe. If past history is any indication, she is likely to capture between 2 to 3 percent of the vote. If the race between McCrory and Dalton tightens, her presence could have an impact in the overall result, but if the gap stays closer to its current range, the third party candidate will not be consequential to the ultimate outcome.

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NCFEF staff John Rustin and Jonathan Kappler contributed to this report.  

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