- [Kelly] New polling in early voting data creates some interesting scenarios for North Carolina's races, and the presidential candidates continue their strong presence in our state.

This is "State Lines".

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[dramatic music] ♪ - Hello and welcome back to "State Lines".

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me for this week's show, Rick Glazier of Campbell Law School, "Carolina Journal's" Donna King, political consultant David Capen debuts on "State Lines".

As always, welcome to the panel, David.

- Thank you for having me.

- [Kelly] You're with a great group.

And WUNC radio and good friend of the show, Colin Campbell's in seat four.

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween.

- Yes, hope you did.

- Yes.

- Well, will the election day be scarier than Halloween, Rick?

That's what we have to figure out.

- Probably.

- Scare half the country, at least, right?

WRAL has released a poll of North Carolina races as we enter this home stretch.

853 likely voters were polled.

It looks like in our state still, as we enter election week, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump each tied 47% each.

4% of you are out there saying you're still undecided.

Let's look at the governor's race.

Not so close according to WRAL.

Democrat Josh Stein leads Mark Robinson by a full 15 percentage points, 52 to 37%.

And this poll, Colin, shows that 20% of people who say they're voting for Trump are backing Josh Stein in that race.

That's a tremendous number of Republicans crossing over.

That's not just Cooper Trump voters.

- Yeah, and it is fascinating because I sort of thought when Mark Robinson's campaign started to have all these scandals, well, maybe some of his voters will go for say like the Constitution party or the Libertarians, some third party alternative.

A lot of them are just going straight for Stein, which is interesting.

But at the same time thinking, all this stuff has happened with Robinson.

They're abandoning support for him.

They're not abandoning Donald Trump despite all the scandals he's had in his time in the public eye, which is an interesting, I think, dichotomy in this race.

Because to be at a tie, like an actual tie, not just a, well, it's within the margin of error, so we should consider it tied, but like the same percentage point in a poll for both Harris and Trump.

I mean, that's as much of a nail biter as it's gonna get.

- David, do you buy 4% in that presidential race are still undecided?

Or from your experience, do people not wanna tell a pollster who's randomly called them on their cell phone who they're voting for?

- I do think voters are apprehensive to answering polls and so you always have to take them with a grain of salt.

The ultimate poll is gonna be ballots cast on Election Day, and I think the race is gonna be extremely close.

All the races, aside from the gubernatorial contest, are set to be extremely close.

Even in the polls, they're all within the margin of error.

So it's really gonna come down to who has the greatest turnout, and based on that, what voters that turnout are actually gonna finish their ballot all the way for those down ballot races.

- Donna, your group at "Carolina Journal" have done a great job with polls and we thank you so much for the investment.

- Thank you.

- In finding out what people think.

But how does this compare to what you're feeling?

I mean, I don't know if you release every poll you do.

- Sure.

- But Elon was a little older poll, 21 points.

- Sure.

- Would Mark Robinson have gained six points in the last few weeks?

- This isn't that far off from what our polls are finding.

I will say that in things like the Elon poll, that was of registered voters, and our poll in WRAL was of likely voters.

- [Kelly] Likely.

- And that's a big difference, that makes a huge difference in the quality of your poll.

One of the things though, I think that's important to know, I don't know that it will end up being by 15 points, but certainly Josh Stein is far ahead of Mark Robinson at this point.

It's given Democrats some flexibility to spend more money on those down ballot races when you have that kind of breathing room.

And so I think at this point, even with Trump, I feel like leading even at that 47%, we're still seeing some momentum in the Trump campaign.

Josh Stein really would, could be able to pull down those down ballot candidates at council, at state with him in that way, just with money.

That speaks to the power of advertising.

Certainly, they've spent a ton of money advertising against Mark Robinson.

And also, it speaks to, you know, a candidate like Stein who doesn't go hardcore far left politics publicly, and that's something I think we're seeing among this electorate in North Carolina, they're just not interested in some of these polarizing comments and these polarizing issues that we've seen, and he's kinda been able to steer clear of them.

- Rick to Donna's point, there's things a candidate says and then there's what they do when they get elected is, is Josh Stein truly a moderate or is he more on the liberal side of the Democratic Party in terms of Carolina legislative politics?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, Josh served several terms in the state senate, previously was in the AG's office working for Roy Cooper, obviously had prior political experience in Washington, and then has served now as the AG, and now very likely will be the next governor.

And I think Josh has always had a sort of center left, but pragmatic, a very pragmatic approach to legislating, a very pragmatic approach to how he runs his office.

And I think he's viewed with great respect both across the aisle and within the party.

And I think Donna's points were absolutely accurate about Josh.

I think it's interesting though, we pass over this point, if your data that you pointed up, despite Mark Robinson running what may be one of the worst campaigns that you could have for governor in terms of all the mishaps that have occurred and what's come out, Josh Stein's still at only 52%, which speaks to the incredible polarization that exists within the state.

If Kamala Harris is at 47 and Josh is at 52, and you've got lots of people who are not gonna be voting for the governor, but there is this, what used to be maybe 15 years ago, 10 to 15% of split in your ballot, now it's about 3% split.

So this is a little unusual, but it speaks to that dynamic that is taken over.

- David, why would conservatives crossover?

Why not give Mark Robinson the benefit of the doubt that his denial of everything that's happened, and I wanna re-litigate that from CNN's reporting, what makes them crossover and so confidently say, "We'll vote for Josh Stein, but we're not giving up on Donald Trump?"

- Well, I think the candidate, aside of Mark Robinson and whatever's happened in that campaign, North Carolina voters, conservatives, liberals, centrists have traditionally leaned a little bit more conservative towards the top of the ticket in recent years.

And they show that they're willing to vote for a Republican presidential candidate, a Democratic governor, and then kinda ping pong back and forth the rest of the down ballot.

So I think even candidate aside and some of the recent stories that have made big news, voters may have been more inclined to keep with North Carolina tradition of electing a Democratic governor.

- All right, Colin, let's look down the ballot.

WRAL also polled for the attorney general race and the state superintendent of public instruction.

For attorney general, the data shows Democrat Jeff Jackson holding a two point lead over Republican Dan Bishop.

That's clearly within margin of error, so you can call that a tie.

14% still say they're undecided.

And over in that state superintendent's race, if you're engaged at all in social media anything, you know about Michelle Morrow and Mo Green, yet Michelle Morrow holds a one point lead over Democrat Green.

17% of people say they are still undecided about state superintendent.

Do people not know about the public schools race, or are they not saying what they wanna do because of some of the rhetoric, and I'm a say vitriol, but the sure strong tone of that campaign?

- You know, I think we've heard a lot about that race just following state level news media, but it hasn't percolated up to the top the way the governor's race and the presidential have.

So a lot of people, I think, are procrastinating.

They're waiting 'til the last minute when they're getting ready to look at their sample ballots and decide who they're gonna vote for to research that.

And we see that even on our own website analytics.

People are googling and landing on our pages about these different.

Candidates stories we wrote months ago about the different issues involved in these.

A lot of this is gonna come down to, I think, last minute advertising.

These Council of state races have been fascinating because Republicans have really been strategic about where they've fundraised the most, where they've put a lot of their financial resources.

So Michelle Morrow, for example, has not run any TV ads whatsoever, Mo Green has.

So I think that can make a difference sort of in these final last minute deciders to give him a little bit more of an edge, whereas Republicans to put a lot more money into, say, the Attorney General race backing Republican Congressman Dan Bishop.

So that I think is gonna come a lot more down to the wire because there's so much messaging that's gonna percolate to people who aren't watching the news, but they're seeing ads on some other TV show.

- Have two things to talk about, Rick, the state superintendent's race.

- Yeah, I mean, I think first off, I agree with exactly what Colin said, but this isn't any different in a sense.

Public has never focused on the state superintendent's race.

It's always been a council state race that's not had a lot of money attributed to it, not had a lot of publicity attributed to it, despite its critical importance to the education system, public education system in the state.

So it's not surprising in that regard.

It is a little surprising that the Democrats haven't actually put a little more money into Mo Green's race to highlight what is an enormous difference between the qualification, skills, and candidate character in that race.

I think it may come out in this last couple weeks, but I'm not all that shocked to see it being fairly close and that there's a large undecided vote.

I think people have just focused elsewhere and there hasn't been much attention to that race, - In our world, Donna, in the bubble of Raleigh and state politics, this is a high profile race.

There was the governor's race, the Attorney General's race, and we brought along the superintendent.

Your take on Michelle Morrow having a one point lead in a poll that if you read the way the question's worded, I would say not so friendly towards her.

- No, absolutely.

I totally agree with that.

And one of the things that I like about this is that it's kind of a sleeper race, because one of the things that Michelle Morrow has really focused on is parent autonomy and really rethinking how we structure, fund, what level of control parents have over their children's education.

And so she is tapped into a really passionate base, still frustrated, those mama bears, still frustrated with the state government shutting down public schools during Covid, and she has hit the nail on the head with those voters.

So if they're for Morrow, they are for Morrow, they are bought in and they are ready to show up.

- David, Republicans and Democrats have tried to paint the Morrow campaign, much like the Robinson campaign was painted in terms of who's running it, how it's being managed, the quote quality of the candidate, she's up 1%.

- It's not very surprising to me.

I think that in recent years, parents, especially during Covid with a lot of the at home learning, have been more involved in their children's education and seeing what's being taught to them in the classroom.

And I think that maybe some of the rhetoric is a little bit out of norm for what we're used to in a superintendent race.

But I think it's really just drawing on the passionate parents out there who want to make sure that their kids are focusing on the basics in the classroom, reading, writing, arithmetic.

And so I think that's what she's bringing to the table and I think that's why she's up in the polls.

- I would follow those comments.

I think she really has tapped into base of, in a sense, the Mo Green campaign relied on the Democratic and coordinated committee.

I think she's relied on the base of parents that she's been a part of for quite some time.

I will say that it is important I think to get out the qualifications of candidates.

And in Mo Green's case, for example, I mean a lawyer, former superintendent, former associate superintendent of large school systems, and former executive director of the Z Smith Reynolds Foundation.

So there's a very big difference in sort of what you're looking for between his qualifications and Michelle Morrow's who are on the ground on very deep issues of concern to parents.

And so it's a pretty stark choice.

- But those might be hurting him.

You know, that, you know, - He's not a change candidate - Sure.

- In a time when people are upset about different aspects of public school- - Exactly.

- And wanna see some change.

Yes.

- Yeah.

I think you're seeing a frustration among parents, particularly with, you know, kids in public school who perhaps, you know, private isn't in the cards for them financially and they don't like the status quo.

So if you're a status quo candidate who has that sort of institutional education, it could be hurting him.

- Is there a difference in, I don't wanna use revolution as terms of this all communist and all that, however, there are people that I would say disruption versus reform.

Is there a difference in the modern political climate, Donna?

Because Michele Morrow has brought a whole host of new ideas- - Sure.

- And set aside the tweets, because if she's elected, those tweets don't matter.

It's policy that matters.

- Absolutely.

- [Speaker] Is she a reformer?

Is she there to disrupt the public school system- - Think both.

- To make it, in her mind, better?

I will say in my 20 years in legislator, you may not like a politician.

- Sure.

- I've never met one that ran for office in an attempt to do harm.

- Right.

- Drake may think some of 'em have done harm.

- Oh, yeah.

[laughs] - But they all are running with high and noble and playing- - Well, I think in both cases.

- Including Mr. Glazer.

- If you look at Josh Stein and Michele Morrow, it's all gonna come down to who they hire.

- Right.

- You know, who are they gonna be working with?

Who's gonna have, you know, a key to their office door that's gonna know exactly, you know, what they want?

What kind of policy they can implement?

Is Josh Stein going to keep the same staff that he had with Roy Cooper?

Is he gonna rebuild, try and improve his relationship between the governor's office and the North Carolina General Assembly?

That has to happen.

There has to be a better relationship with the Republican-led General Assembly if they keep the majority.

And the Governor's office.

What's happened so far is just not worked.

And then Michele Morrow has to surround herself with people with deep policy understanding and be able to structure this.

This is one of our largest organizations in North Carolina, and it's a big job.

- And she's not popular with the establishment Republican party in Raleigh from my understanding of this situation.

- Yeah, she hasn't gotten a lot of support from the establishment.

Her campaign, I think, has raised, like, low six figures at this point, when Green has millions in his coffers.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, I mean, the Republican legislature is gonna decide the big educational policy issues in the state.

This is an office that doesn't have a whole lot of power, whether it's held by a Democrat or a Republican.

- And it may lose power if there's another special session called, or they just adjourn in for a day or two.

- Well, you've actually heard a reinvigoration of an idea that happened a long time ago, which was this concept of sort of essentially removing the superintendent of public instruction as the head and going in a different route.

That happened during June Atkinson's time in the legislature in the position.

And so, it's interesting to see what will happen and where the legislature will go if she wins, and how much power they will allow her to have or how much they will take away.

But, you know, again, I think that's up in the air.

- David, how partisan must the superintendent's race be?

Could voters originally set aside party and look at each candidate's platform?

What's the appropriate approach to selecting if you don't want to just vote based on your party?

- Well, I do think Colin brought up an interesting point of sort of an establishment, more of the same candidate or a change agent.

And so, that's where rhetoric aside, I mean, you know, parents are certainly passionate and probably have a feeling that North Carolina's education system is on the wrong track right now.

And so, the choice in this race is between somebody who is going to come and really have a lot of soft power as the superintendent public instruction to be able to influence the narrative of public education in North Carolina, versus somebody who is maybe more of the same of what's been going on.

- Do you think dedicated voters would determine this race, or will this be one of those down ballot races that if you're already going boop, boop, boop boop, it becomes more of an afterthought for at least those 15 to 20 to 50,000 votes that may separate this outcome?

- Well, there's some of both.

And as I say, it's gonna come down to voters finishing their ballot and going all the way from the top of the ticket to the bottom.

- I don't wanna shortchange Bishop and Jackson, we're over on this segment.

However, that's a close tight race, and those gentlemen are two very different politicians.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And since they're both sitting members of Congress, there's been a lot of outside fundraising in this race.

A lot of, you know, attack ads going back and forth.

You know, I think Jeff Jackson has definitely been the standard barrier for his party for a while.

Dan Bishop is more towards the right flank of his party in Congress, and so you've seen a lot of attack ads around, you know, Bishop support for the bathroom bill, house bill 2, Jackson, they've tried to tie him in with some, you know, sex offenders in the Charlotte area that have supported his campaign.

This is a kind of a vicious race that's sort of, at least from a media standpoint, flown below the radar, but a lot of people are seeing a good bit of advertising in this and I think there'll be some last minute decision making, but at the same time it's Democrats race to lose, right?

Because they've held this office for over a hundred years, so I think that's- - [Kelly] There's never been a Republican.

- If there was, it was back in the late 1800s, I believe.

- During a reconstruction.

- An appointment, but not an election.

- Does that count?

You have to say it counts.

I mean, appointed council.

Let's see, Rick, will people vote across party lines if they don't feel safe or do you think North Carolinians are feeling, I don't know how to interpret this AGs race, it's law and order, it's also public policy and defending constitutional amendments and other issues at Raleigh.

- Yeah, I think it's gonna be, the numbers again, suggest that it's not deviating far from a very tight race and a strict ideological or political party breakout.

But I do think there's gonna be some crossover there and I think the House Bill two issue with Bishop is a deciding factor for some voters, might be otherwise voting a different ballot, and I think the issues that have been raised with regard to where sort of Dan Bishop was or is in Congress and how he's viewed in Congress from the deep right flank of Congress, I think, is being used.

So I think there'll be some deviation, but I don't think it's gonna track more than four or five points different.

- At the risk of launching you launching into a legal sermon or a lecture that, as you are now- - I try not to.

- As you are now trained to do.

The Attorney General's role in North Carolina, is it to blindly represent the state of North Carolina in court issues or is it a flexible job where the AG can decide in their conscious what's unconstitutional and worth pursuing?

- So it really is an interesting question.

I do think as a starting point, sort of as a presumptive, the AG represents the state, but in that sense, it doesn't mean that the AG supports everything or has to go to court on everything.

If an AG makes a determination in a thoughtful, intelligent and informed way, that a bill passed is unconstitutional and cannot defend it or a case that's come up through the court system is not defensible, I think an AG has an obligation in his or her role to uphold the constitution, not to uphold a particular bill and so that has become an issue.

I think where it gets very murky and has always been, is in things like voting rights in areas where you end up with, there's real political party differences.

But, I think in the end, people elect public officials to uphold the contract they have with them, which is to act in an intelligent, informed and thoughtful way and to value as much as possible, authenticity over ideology and morality over expediency.

- Donna, I've not heard as much about that in that race, more than I think Bishop has hit Jeff Jackson on, he just wants to be governor or senator, he's just passing through.

Aren't they all trying to pass through?

But, this is a real issue that I'm not reading about.

- [Donna] Absolutely, no, no, absolutely.

- But I'm worried about Jeff Jackson running for higher office one day.

- Sure, sure.

Well, Attorney General is a critically important role in itself.

It should not be a step to Governor.

Now they certainly, you know, they call AG almost Governor and whatever on the way to governor, whatever it is.

But AG is so important and it also speaks to why it's so important that the AG has a good working relationship with the North Carolina General Assembly and that just has not happened in the last two AGs and so being able to really work it out, work out constitutionality of legislation and that's something that Dan Bishop has very much focused on in his campaign.

He's a constitutionalist and does not seem to see it as political, I don't really know, he's just really focusing on law and order and I think that that relationship is critical to have with the North Carolina General Assembly.

- [Kelly] Doubled.

- They're both focused on law and order to a degree.

- Yeah.

- I mean Jeff, Jeff Jackson's a former prosecutor, right?

Dan Bishop's never prosecuted a case in his life.

So they've both focused on that.

I think they're both focused on it, but they're coming at it from a... - Right.

- ...different perspective.

- And 14%, if they're really undecided, that determines this race.

- Absolutely.

- Alright, well Donna, back to you with the Republican early voters, they say their GOP voters are outpacing democratic early voters in North Carolina and have done the entire, have done so the entire early-voting period.

There are now higher number of unaffiliated early voters.

So the numbers and aggregate are up.

There are only 7.8 million registered North Carolina voters and over 3.8 million ballots have been cast.

And for the record, it appears this turnout is much like Georgia's turnout.

North Carolina, Georgia, kind of walking hand in hand, Donna.

50% of the ballots already in.

- Can you believe it?

- Is it over?

I mean... - Hard to say.

I think that of course election day's gonna make a big difference of course.

And normally Republicans have a jump, what they call kind of a surge there on election day.

But I do think the party and some other groups have really focused on getting that vote out early.

Take advantage of early voting, telling Republicans to take advantage of absentee if they need to.

We have 7.7 million registered voters in North Carolina.

We already have 3.8 million ballots cast.

That is a ton.

And it's exciting.

I think anytime you see that kind of turnout, it's huge.

Right now, 1.3 of them are Republican, 1.2 of them are Democrats, 1.2 are unaffiliated.

Can't underestimate that unaffiliated vote 'cause you don't know where they're going.

But the biggest thing we're not going to hit, I don't think, it doesn't look like we're gonna hit the turnout levels that we had in 2020, because we're still kind of falling behind.

That's largely due to a drop-off in Democrat early-voting.

So whether those Democrats now flip roles with the Republicans and have a surge on election day, that remains to be seen.

But right now I think Republicans can at least take something of a victory lap that they got people to the polls early.

- David, we had Paul Shoemaker and we had Morgan Jackson, Democrat, Republican, kings of the mountain in the GOP.

One day you'll be there, sir.

What do you make of their assertion that the GOP early vote is really just election day voters who have changed their habits because now their candidates are encouraging them to do so?

This is not a surge of new voters coming out of the woodwork?

- Well that's certainly a big question that we're all looking at right now.

I believe the total vote turnout right now, just after day 15 of early-voting, is already a higher turnout than we had in the 2022 election in total.

And so it just shows the excitement and motivation of GOP voters to get out early.

The question as to whether we're cannibalizing our own election day voters, I mean the RNC is certainly invested in the banker vote initiative to get people to go out and secure their vote early.

And from a political consulting perspective, it's very helpful when voters go out and vote early because then we can remove them from our lists, and re-target those resources to voters who have not yet cast their ballots.

So if you would like to stop getting political texts and direct mail, vote early.

- In other words, vote early, you don't get pestered as long, Colin.

Final word on this before we move on to the Trump and Harris being in North Carolina.

Very quickly.

- Yeah, I think the challenge in this is comparing to 2020, 'cause we were in the middle of a pandemic.

So we had lot of Democrats, Black voters who tried to vote by mail and that was obviously earlier in the cycle.

'Cause if you vote by mail, you wanna get that done early, those folks may shift to late early voters or to the election day voting.

Republicans were told by Trump several years ago, vote on election day, but don't vote early.

Now they're being told to vote early.

So they are voting early.

And so we really won't know until election night and maybe beyond.

- As as anxious as America seems to be, it's a fun time of year.

Next week we'll be so let down.

There'll be no energy going into an election.

We'll be dealing with the aftermath.

Well, Trump and Harris, were in North Carolina campaigning this week.

Both candidates seem to be narrowing down their final pitches to voters and there may be less than 5% of you out there who say you can be swayed.

- North Carolina, I am asking for your vote.

[crowd cheers] - Yeah!

I am asking for your vote.

[crowd cheers loudly] And here is my pledge to you: As your President, I pledge to seek common ground.

and common sense solutions to the challenges you face.

[audience cheers and applauds] I am not looking to score political points.

I am looking to make progress.

- [Crowd] Yes!

- I will end inflation.

I will stop the massive invasion of criminals into our country and I will bring back a thing called the American dream.

Isn't that nice?

Because we haven't had that.

We haven't had that in a long time.

Our country will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer, and stronger than ever before.

- Well, Rick, there you go.

Final arguments, final two minutes of this show.

You know, when you cut out all the he's bad, she's bad stuff, they do say things and they say things they want to do.

Should we have gotten more policy earlier in this race?

- I think this race, all races have some policy aspects to it.

I don't think this race is being decided by much on policy.

I do think in the end it's gotta be decided as any presidential race is on sort of character and integrity and transparency and who you feel comfortable with to lead your country.

I mean, leadership is not about any particular policy.

It is about moving people to their best dreams and hopes and aspirations.

And they're both trying to do that in different ways.

- Donna, last word.

- Absolutely.

This really speaks to how important North Carolina's vote is in this cycle.

We're considered the second most powerful vote of any state right now because of our 16 electoral votes.

And we're seeing, Harris has really focused on Charlotte in Raleigh this week.

The Trump campaign is focused on CD one and a few of the other rural areas.

So really speaks to how important North Carolina is.

- David, is Trump going for the last of the undecideds, or is this to rally the base?

- Well, I think, I think they're both going after the little bit of undecided voters left.

It's always great to see North Carolina center stage in national politics, but I did watch both rallies and it was interesting to see Trump really focused on policy of public safety, economic opportunity, restoring the American dream.

And Harris spent 90% of her rally talking about Donald Trump.

So it'll be interesting to see what really moves the needle with- - 20 seconds, Colin.

- Yeah, not too many undecideds left in this race, but it will come down to the margin.

So that's the role.

A lot of it's gonna come down to turnout.

Sounds like a cliche, but how much can these campaigns actually motivate people to go to the polls by the end of the day Tuesday?

We won't know until then.

- We'll check in Wednesday morning, bright and early with you, see how much, how long you stayed up, and how early you had to get up to make that radio.

- That's the worry, to see how long it takes.

- Thank you panelists for joining us.

It's always great to have you.

David, welcome to the show.

Email me if you have an opinion on what they've said.

Statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

I do hope to see you next time.

Bye bye.

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