For only the second time this election cycle, the Democratic pollster PPP shows Mitt Romney edging President Obama among North Carolina voters, 48% to 46%.
Romney took 48 percent to Obama’s 46. That’s a 7-point swing from the same poll in April that showed Obama leading 49 to 44 percent.That’s in line with the Real Clear Politics average of polls, which shows Romney with a 2.5 percent lead.
Romney’s favorability rating in North Carolina has improved drastically. In April he was at 29 percent favorable and 58 unfavorable, but sits at 41 percent positive and 46 negative in the current poll.
Romney has also made big gains among independents in the state, edging Obama by 1 point after trailing by 13 earlier in the year.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the only age group President Obama wins in a head-to-head matchup against Mitt Romney, according to the survey, is youth voters, an important constituency he has gone to great lengths to court. Even so, Democrats in North Carolina are fleeing their party in records numbers. Only 76 percent, for example, approve of the president’s performance (that’s down four percentage points since May) and a whopping 20 percent now support Mitt Romney in a head-to-head matchup. Let that sink in. This unexpected shift in public opinion was inconceivable just a few months ago, and could be attributed at least in part to the rising national unemployment rate or the abysmal May jobs report.
Let’s not forget, either, that President Obama chose to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention in North Carolina. This is a state, as we’ve noted before, that has lost as many as 50,000 jobs since President Obama took office and boasts an unemployment rate well above the national average. Team Romney, in other words, should continue to remind voters that the president’s economic policies have failed North Carolinians -- and, while they're at it, play the following advertisement on repeat.
