Poll: North Carolina Rep. Ted Budd Holds 5 Point Lead over Dem Opponent in Senate Race

Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina, holds nearly a five percentage point lead over his general election opponent, Democratic nominee Cheri Beasley, according to a Cygnal poll released by the John Locke Foundation Thursday.

The poll asked voters: “If the general election for U.S. Senate was held today, and you had to make a choice, who would you vote for?” 

Of the respondents, 45 percent selected Budd, who received President Donald Trump’s backing in the primary, while Beasley, a former chief justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court, garnered 40.3 percent of the response. Green Party candidate Matthew Hoh and Libertarian candidate Shannon Bray each polled under three percent, and eleven percent were undecided. 

Budd fared very well in his primary race last month, securing nearly 60 percent of the vote and beating out a crowded field of opponents. 

Poll participants were also asked to categorize how “serious of a problem is inflation in the U.S.?”

A whopping 88.4 percent of those surveyed stated it is a “huge problem,” while 8.7 percent said it was a “minor problem,” and only .9 percent said it was not “a problem at all.”

Of respondents, 76.1 percent said they are having a “difficult” time affording gasoline, while 12.4 percent said they are having “neither easy nor difficult” time paying at the pump, and just 11.1 percent said they are easily paying for gas.

The survey also asked respondents about how much responsibility President Joe Biden bears “for the historically high rate of inflation in the U.S.?” 

A large portion of respondents (41.1 percent) said Biden is entirely responsible for inflation, while another 36.6 percent believe he is somewhat responsible. Just 19.5 percent asserted he was in no way responsible, and another 2.8 percent were undecided. 

The Civitas poll, conducted by Cygnal for the John Locke Foundation, sampled 600 likely general election voters from North Carolina between June 17-19 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.95 percentage points. Interviews were conducted via SMS and live phone calls, and 33.2 percent of participants said they were registered as Republicans. In comparison, 33.4 percent said they were registered Democrats, and 30 percent reported to be independents.