Polls can be off and things may change between now and election day, buy a jam-packed new poll provides some interesting input on where North Carolinians currently stand in a number of political races.

A new High Point University poll released Thursday, Sept. 24, has former Democratic NC Gov. Roy Cooper leading Republican Michael Whatley by 8 percentage points in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race – but the Senate contest might not be the most interesting number in the poll.

The survey found Democratic candidates leading Republicans not just in the Senate race but on every generic ballot question HPU asked.

Cooper led Whatley 50 percent to 42 percent among likely North Carolina voters –  with 3 percent choosing another candidate and 5 percent unsure.

Likely voters favored Democrats over Republicans 48 percent to 44 percent for the U.S. House, 48 percent to 44 percent for the North Carolina House and 49 percent to 44 percent for the North Carolina Senate.

In the North Carolina Supreme Court race, Democratic Justice Anita Earls held a much narrower 46 percent to 44 percent advantage over Republican challenger Sarah Stevens.

The results come less than six weeks before the Tuesday, Nov. 3 election and add to a series of recent polls showing Cooper ahead of Whatley.

An East Carolina University poll conducted Aug. 31 through Sept. 3 had Cooper ahead 46 percent to 39 percent, with 14 percent undecided. When respondents were required to choose among the candidates rather than remain undecided, Cooper led 52 percent to 44 percent.

A Trafalgar Group poll released Sept. 13 had Cooper ahead 48 percent to 42 percent.

And a Carolina Journal/Harper Polling survey released Sept. 17 produced a considerably larger margin: Cooper ahead 49 percent to 34 percent and 12 percent undecided.

Taken together, the polls differ substantially on the size of Cooper’s advantage but have agreed on who is ahead.

The new HPU poll is also notable because it shows some movement since the university’s August survey.

In August, HPU also had Cooper at 50 percent, but Whatley was at 45 percent. That means Cooper’s support is unchanged in the latest survey while Whatley’s dropped 3 percentage points.

The movement on the congressional ballot was larger.

In August, HPU found likely voters evenly divided at 47 percent for the Democratic candidate and 47 percent for the Republican candidate for U.S. House. The September poll has Democrats ahead 48 percent to 44 percent.

That four-point Democratic advantage in North Carolina is significant, but it’s actually smaller than the Democratic advantage showing up nationally: The Real Clear Polling average of national generic congressional ballot polls Thursday had Democrats at 50.4 percent and Republicans at 41.9 percent – an 8.5-point Democratic advantage.

That means that the HPU survey portrays North Carolina as moving in the same direction as the national electorate but remaining several points more Republican than the country overall.

That wouldn’t be particularly surprising in a state that has remained closely divided politically.

President Donald Trump carried North Carolina in 2024 with 50.86 percent of the vote to 47.65 percent for Democrat Kamala Harris, a margin of just over 3 percentage points. During the same election, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Josh Stein governor.

The HPU poll also provides another indication that the political environment facing Republicans is difficult nationally – although some of its findings are less negative for Trump than in the national polling.

Trump had a 43 percent job approval rating among North Carolina likely voters in the HPU survey, with 52 percent disapproving. The Real Clear Polling national average has Trump at about 40 percent approval and 58.5 percent disapproval.

So Trump actually performs somewhat better in the HPU North Carolina poll than he does in the current national polling average.

Recent individual national polls have varied a lot. Rasmussen had Trump at 43 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval, while NPR/PBS/Marist had him at 39 percent approval and CNN had him at 33 percent.

HPU’s own polling also does not show Trump deteriorating from August.

In the August HPU poll, 42 percent approved of Trump’s performance and 54 percent disapproved. In September, those numbers moved slightly in his favor to 43 percent approval and 52 percent disapproval.

That makes the movement on the ballot questions especially interesting.

During roughly the same period in which Trump’s HPU approval rating improved slightly, the U.S. House generic ballot moved from a tie to a four-point Democratic advantage and Whatley dropped three points against Cooper.

The poll therefore doesn’t lend itself neatly to the conclusion that Republican candidates are losing ground simply because Trump’s personal standing has declined.

Vice President J.D. Vance performed considerably better than Trump in the new HPU survey, with 48 percent approving of his job performance and 43 percent disapproving.

North Carolina voters also appeared somewhat less pessimistic about the country than voters nationally. HPU found 57 percent saying the country was on the wrong track and 37 percent saying it was headed in the right direction.

Recent national surveys have generally shown larger wrong-track margins. A Sept. 22 Economist/YouGov poll found 67 percent saying the country was on the wrong track and 29 percent saying America was headed in the right direction. Rasmussen and Quantus polls released Sept. 21 both had 60 percent saying wrong track and 35 percent saying right direction.

North Carolinians were considerably less negative when asked about their own state. Forty-one percent said North Carolina was headed in the right direction and 46 percent said it was on the wrong track – with 12 percent unsure.

That represents an improvement from HPU’s August poll, when only 35 percent said North Carolina was headed in the right direction and 48 percent said it was on the wrong track.

There were also some surprisingly large changes in views regarding government institutions.

Approval of Congress jumped from 22 percent in HPU’s August poll to 33 percent in September, while disapproval fell from 65 percent to 53 percent.

Approval of the U.S. Supreme Court increased from 36 percent to 44 percent while disapproval fell from 45 percent to 40 percent.

Those relatively large one-month changes are also a reminder not to treat every movement between two polls as a genuine change in public opinion.

HPU surveyed 1,003 North Carolina adults between Sept. 6 and Sept. 16, including 706 respondents classified as likely voters.

The poll was conducted online using respondents from a Dynata panel rather than a traditional random sample. Since participants weren’t randomly selected, HPU says a conventional margin of sampling error shouldn’t technically be assigned to the results.

HPU instead reports a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for the likely-voter sample.

That interval also means the two-point Earls-Stevens Supreme Court margin and the four- and five-point generic ballot differences should be viewed differently from Cooper’s eight-point advantage.

And, while no single poll can establish where an election will finish, HPU’s new survey adds another result to a collection of September polls that have consistently shown Cooper ahead of Whatley while also showing a political environment in North Carolina that currently differs from the one that gave Trump a three-point victory in the state less than two years ago.

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