(The Center Square) – Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley 48%-41% in a statewide poll sampling North Carolina’s 2026 election for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Thom Tillis, a small improvement from a month ago.
The poll of 855 likely voters taken Sept. 2-8 in conjunction with Change Research generated 9% of respondents indicating they were not sure and 2% saying they would not vote. The margin of error is +/- 3.6%.
In a poll released Aug. 14 by Carolina Journal, 600 likely voters – at +/- 3.98% margin of error – gave Cooper a 47.3%-39.1% lead. The Emerson College Polling Center on Aug. 1 yielded Cooper a 47%-41% lead.
The race is expected to set spending records for a Senate seat, with estimates between $500 million and $750 million. Cooper is former two-term Democratic governor of the state. Whatley is former chairman of both the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party.
Blair Reeves, chairman of Carolina Forward, said in a statement, “It’s clear that Roy Cooper is the frontrunner in this race, no question. Roy Cooper commands near-universal name recognition among North Carolina voters, a strongly established personal brand, and high net approval ratings from his time as governor. By contrast, more than 40% of voters, including a third of Republicans, have never heard of his opponent. That speaks to a very difficult recruitment environment for Republicans, and it’ll be a challenge to overcome.”
Monday represented the 47th day of Whatley’s campaign, the 50th for Cooper. Election Day is 414 away.
Both candidates are without significant policy stumps since initially declaring and the August polls were released. Other possible influences for voters have been violence that captured the state and nation’s attention in Charlotte (happened Aug. 22, a video release Sept. 5), Minneapolis (Aug. 27), and Orem, Utah (Sept. 10) that has been both within reason for this sampling of voters to consider and, in the case of Charlie Kirk’s death, to not yet have happened.
On a question of who did respondents vote for in the 2024 presidential election, 48% went for Republican Donald Trump and 45% for Democrat Kamala Harris. More than 8 in 10 plan to vote in the 2026 midterms for the Senate seat, the poll says.
A generic question of major party choice for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives went 44%-40% to “the Democratic candidate.”
In approval ratings, first-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein was 48% approval, 36% disapproval; Trump was 48% approval, 50% disapproval; and the Legislature was 32% approval and 51% disapproval. Respondents on the state economy called it worse (49%) more than about the same (36%) or better (15%).
Carolina Forward bills itself as “an independent, statewide public policy think tank dedicated to advancing evidence-based solutions for North Carolina’s most pressing challenges. The organization conducts research, analysis, and polling to inform public discourse and policy development across the state.”
