Rep. Ted Budd has bounced back into the lead in the race for the Republican nomination for Senate in North Carolina, according to a fresh poll.
Budd, endorsed by former President Donald Trump, topped former Gov. Pat McCrory 38% to 22%, with 9% supporting former Rep. Mark Walker and a whopping 23% undecided, per an Emerson College survey sponsored by the Hill. Budd had struggled lately, and some polls had shown McCrory with an advantage. This dataset suggests the congressman has regained his footing in a GOP primary that serves as a key test of Trump’s influence inside the GOP.
“Budd and McCrory are evenly split with 31% apiece among suburban voters,” Emerson College Polling Executive Director Spencer Kimball said in a statement. “However, rural voters break for Budd 42% to McCrory’s 11%.”
Indeed, the poll revealed splits among key voter demographics that have increasingly characterized politics in the Trump era.
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For instance, President Joe Biden’s overall approval rating in North Carolina in this survey was 44%. But Biden’s approval stood at a healthy 57% among voters with a college degree and an abysmal 35% among voters without a college degree.
Meanwhile, 59% of Republican voters said Trump’s endorsement matters — that it makes them more likely to support a candidate in the GOP Senate primary. That also was true of half of the 23% of Republican voters who said they were still undecided as to whom they would back in the May 17 contest.
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Emerson College Polling surveyed registered voters in North Carolina from April 2-4. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. The portion of the poll measuring Republican voters was 4.3 points. Republican Sen. Richard Burr is retiring.
