NC-SEN: Tillis' Struggles With GOP Base Have Cunningham Seeking Votes in 'Unlikely Places
As North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis faces former state Sen. Cal Cunningham (D) in a tough re-election race, polling shows the Republican incumbent underperforming President Donald Trump’s standing in the battleground state, indicating a missing piece of the coalition he’ll need to win re-election in November: unity in his party’s base.
It’s a gap his Democratic rival is planning to use to his advantage as he seeks to unseat one of the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbents in a race that could tip control of the chamber.
“There are a lot of Trump voters that I’m hearing from that are going to split tickets,” Cunningham said in an Aug. 20 interview with Morning Consult. Tillis, Cunningham said, “has found a way to alienate much of the electorate here, and I’m actively seeking support — including in unlikely constituencies and unlikely places.”
Cunningham has an opening, according to the latest Morning Consult polling of 1,541 likely North Carolina voters conducted Aug. 14-23. Tillis trails his Democratic rival by 8 percentage points, 47 percent to 39 percent, in a state where former Vice President Joe Biden holds a narrow 49 percent to 46 percent lead over Trump. Compared with the president’s standing, Republican voters and those who voted for Trump in 2016 are both 15 points less likely to say they’ll vote for Tillis in November. The poll has a 2-point margin of error.
Morgan Jackson, a Cunningham campaign strategist, said the Democrat isn’t spending much time criticizing the president on the campaign trail, and he isn’t proactively talking about him much, either.
“No reason to coalesce the Trump base behind Tillis,” he said.
https://morningconsult.com/2020/08/24/majority-makers-north-carolina-senate-cunningham-tillis/