Cal Cunningham surprisingly increases lead in North Carolina Senate race in 1st poll period after texting scandal

(Image credit: Felix!Forever2015)

published 12 October 2020

North Carolina's Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham became mired in a scandal earlier this month when he admitted to exchanging romantic text messages with a woman who is not his wife. Yet a new poll conducted by SurveyUSA showed that Cunningham actually increased his lead over the incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) after the news broke.

In the previous poll, Cunningham was up seven, but that jumped to a 10-point advantage in the iteration released Monday. The growing margin is largely thanks to men and younger voters, who have enhanced their support for the challenger. For example, Cunningham went from trailing Tillis by 11 among all men in September, to up two in October. Meanwhile, women and senior voters did shift more to Tillis in the wake of the scandal. But, overall, it does not appear to have drastically altered the state of the race.

SurveyUSA interviewed 900 adults across North Carolina, 746 of whom are registered to vote in the state, between Oct. 8-11. A margin of error was not reported. Read the full results here.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.