For weeks, Republicans have trumpeted Thom Tillis’s momentum in the pivotal North Carolina Senate race — and to drive the point home, Tillis’s campaign released an internal poll Tuesday showing a tie with Sen. Kay Hagan.
But there is a caveat that has not been made public.
The poll reflects the high-water mark so far for Tillis, the campaign’s chief strategist, Paul Shumaker, told national donors in a call Wednesday afternoon. And Tillis has not once surpassed Hagan in the campaign’s internal polling.
“This is the first time we’ve had it dead even,” Shumaker said. “We’ve consistently tracked two to three points down.”
Such conference calls with donors are not uncommon, especially in the final stage of the campaign, but they are not made accessible to reporters or the public. The Washington Examiner was able to listen in on Wednesday’s call after being connected by an invited donor.
During the candid, 30-minute call, Shumaker, who was joined by Tillis, expressed overall satisfaction with the direction polls have been moving, but also warned that Republicans face an uphill climb against Democratic field operations.
Tillis will derive his base of support from white voters, and the campaign’s latest internal survey, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, indicates he has opened up a wide gap over Hagan among that demographic. Tillis leads among white men by 33 points, 62 percent to 29 percent, and among white women by 20 points, 54 percent to 34 percent, Shumaker said.
But the gender gap faced by many Republican candidates, who tend to struggle among women voters, still holds for Tillis among non-white women, Shumaker noted: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a male Republican or female Republican. You’re not going to get those votes.”
The few donors who spoke up on the call seemed heartened by that latest polling information, including former North Carolina Gov. Jim Martin, a Republican.
“The lesson is, keep doing what you’re doing,” Martin offered. “Don’t try anything rash that could explode on you.”
Indeed, Hagan and Tillis have run remarkably on-message, disciplined campaigns. One of the nation’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbents, Hagan crafted a strategy early to attack Tillis on women’s issues, such as access to birth control, and education funding in North Carolina, to which Tillis made some cuts as the state House speaker. Tillis, for his part, has criticized Hagan for her magnitude of support for President Obama and his policies while she has been a senator.
One of the variables that could swing the race is the composition and strength of the early voting electorate. Shumaker and Tillis expressed some nervousness about the get-out-the-vote operation Democrats have mounted, known nationally as the “Bannock Street project.”
“We do have a very well-financed turnout operation working against us, and in a midterm election that could be a factor,” Shumaker said.
Of those people who have voted early Shumaker said, most are not the low-propensity voters the campaigns have been targeting.
The Tillis campaign in particular has been monitoring the number of votes being cast early by African Americans, who overwhelmingly support Hagan. During the presidential election in 2012, which Democrats are hoping to match, African Americans comprised roughly 30 percent of the early vote. So far, Shumaker said, the share of African American early voters is closer to 23 percent.
“That’s the number we’re watching,” Shumaker said. “Right now, they’re underperforming.”
Shumaker said Tillis also might benefit slightly among African American voters who are dissatisfied with a court decision to allow same-sex marriage in North Carolina.
“There’s a little bit of a shift there,” Shumaker said, pointing to the campaign’s latest numbers. “I can’t tell you what it means right now, but I actually find it encouraging.”
As Republicans have sought this year to wrest the Senate from Democratic control, the North Carolina race has been among the most closely watched and hard-fought, considered by many Democrats and Republicans to be a must-win contest.
As such, the race has attracted attention, and money, from scores of outside groups eager to act as megaphones for the candidates. On the call, Tillis expressed his gratitude in particular to pro-business groups that have helped lift his bid with donations, television ads and other resources.
“They’ve been very good within the rules they have to operate in,” Tillis said. “The U.S. Chamber [of Commerce] in particular has just done an extraordinary job.”
Thanks to spending by such groups, the North Carolina race has wracked up a bill exceeding $100 million — making it the most expensive Senate race of all time. When one donor on the call asked whether the arc of the race could compare to any recent Senate contests in North Carolina, Tillis cited that figure.
“The dynamic is completely different,” Tillis said. “There’s no comparison for a race that has had $103 million spent on it.”
But Tillis did offer a prediction for how close the race will be — and he projected a nailbiter.
“I, for one, would be shocked if the margin of victory is more than a couple of percentage points,” Tillis said.
