Pollster Reveals Who Is Leading In The North Carolina Senate Between Roy Cooper And Michael Whatley

On "Forbes Newsroom," Emerson Pollster Matt Taglia discussed a new poll showing who is leading in the North Carolina Senate race.

Transcript

00:00I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is Matt Taglia,

00:04Senior Director of Emerson College Polling. Matt, thanks so much for joining me.

00:08Thanks for having me, Brittany.

00:10Emerson has some new numbers out about the North Carolina Senate race for 2026.

00:15We are still more than a year away, but as of right now, what is the state of the race?

00:21Well, the state of the race right now is that Cooper has a slight lead,

00:27but it is a significant lead. So 47% for former Governor Roy Cooper versus 41% for

00:35Watley, the Republican challenger, with 12% undecided. So Cooper is posting a slight but

00:42significant lead here. And so there is obviously still time. There are obviously still some undecided

00:48folks out there, but Cooper is in a decent spot right now.

00:52I'm curious, why is Cooper in a decent spot right now? We know that he is the former governor.

00:58Watley is the RNC, one of the RNC co-chairs. Why is Cooper ahead? Because as we know, back in 2024,

01:06Donald Trump won the battleground state of North Carolina.

01:12That's right. He did win. But Cooper was a relatively popular governor for the state of

01:18North Carolina. We also saw that Josh Stein won the state in 2024 and is now the sitting governor.

01:26So right now, Cooper leads among independents by about 19 points. He leads with voters under the age

01:33of 50 by about 25 points. But I think the real story here, as far as why Cooper is ahead,

01:40is that favorability number. So when we look at the favorabilities, we see Cooper has 51% favorable

01:46versus 33% unfavorable. That's really high. So he has a majority who have a favorable opinion of him

01:55in the state. That's 53% among independents, even 27% among Republicans. So a quarter of Republicans

02:02have a favorable opinion of Cooper. You look at Watley, on the other hand, he's at 17% favorable,

02:0916% unfavorable, 66% have no opinion of him or don't know him. So that is the real number here.

02:19Folks just don't know who Watley is necessarily. And that could absolutely change. Obviously,

02:25as the campaigns wrap up, he'll introduce himself a little bit more to the state.

02:29But as it stands, he's at a real disadvantage without that name ID that Cooper has.

02:35I mean, that's a huge number and a huge hurdle to overcome, right? 66% of people not knowing who

02:42you are in that state compared to the former governor. I want to talk, though, about that

02:46undecided block. I mean, how much do they matter? How much will they move the needle on this phrase?

02:53You know, they will matter. I will say 12% undecided is relatively low for being this far out.

03:00You know, remember, this is going to be in 2026, November 2026. But 12% of the electorate,

03:07that's not a huge chunk. So Watley is really going to have an uphill battle here fighting for those

03:13undecideds. I think among those folks who are undecided, most of them probably don't have any

03:19idea who he is, despite being the former chair of the RNC and the former chair of the North Carolina

03:27Republican Party. He still has some work to do there. But there are definitely winnable folks

03:33out there. This isn't over. But, you know, all else being equal, I would certainly rather be Cooper.