Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Washington Secrets, which comes to you refreshed and reinvigorated after a break. Today, we run the rule over polling from North Carolina, with surprising results in a Senate race that might not be as clear-cut as you thought. Plus, we take a look at some of the mysterious language in a so-called rival newsletter!
North Carolina is a must-win state for Democrats as they seek to flip the Senate. Poll after poll gives their candidate, former Gov. Roy Cooper, a decisive lead.
But a new analysis by polling firm J.L. Partners suggests the race is too close to call if undecided voters are taken into account. The results showed that Republican candidate Michael Whatley is running neck and neck with Cooper, within the margin of error of one recent poll, and actually ahead in another, than most pollsters currently believe.
With almost six months until polling day and hundreds of millions of dollars more to be spent, it suggests a longer and more bitter fight to come in North Carolina.
J.L. Partners used a modelling technique that correctly predicted a 53-47 Republican Senate majority in 2024.
While most pollsters simply disregard undecided voters, the J.L. Partners technique allocates them to one candidate or the other based on other responses in the survey, such as whether they are registered with one party or another and who they voted for in previous elections.
Co-founder James Johnson said that in 2024, the analysis showed that undecided Senate voters were more likely to be Trump voters.
That phenomenon appears to be repeating itself, he said.
In some races, as much as 40% of the undecideds voted for Trump last time, about 10 points ahead of those who voted for Kamala Harris, and might be expected to come back into the GOP fold.
This time around, the effect was most pronounced in North Carolina.
In a poll for the Carolina Journal, 45% of uncertain voters in the Senate race voted for Trump in 2024. Only 32% had voted for Harris.
The J.L. Partners reallocation model then reduces Cooper’s lead from 8 points to within the 4-point margin of error.
“There’s a long way to go, and the picture for Republicans this November is tough,” Johnson said.
“But just as in 2024, there’s a hidden dynamic to this election. And it means we shouldn’t rule out some Republicans from their Senate races — and our research suggests that applies most to Michael Whatley in North Carolina.”
His firm was also the most accurate in predicting the 2024 presidential election. Again, his models tended to do a better job of identifying hidden Republican votes.
Applying the reallocation method to a Public Policy Polling survey from March in North Carolina turns a 3-point Cooper lead into a deficit.
Even so, Republicans may face an uphill struggle to hang on to the seat held by Thom Tillis, who decided not to seek a third term.
With few flip opportunities around the country, Democrats have no path to take the Senate if they do not win in North Carolina.
It pits Cooper, a two-term governor with a big-fundraising network and one of the rare Democrats who is popular in the South, against Whatley, a close ally of Trump and one of the masterminds behind the president’s 2024 win.
The result is a frantic, bad-tempered battle in one of the nation’s closest swing states.
Some forecasts suggest it could become the first billion-dollar Senate race in history.
Cooper has the lead in money. He has massively outraised Whatley so far, bringing in $13.8 million in the first quarter of this year, compared with Whatley’s $5 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Whatley campaign spokesman DJ Griffin said the J.L. Partners analysis reflected what he was seeing.
“This polling confirms what we’re seeing across North Carolina: support for Michael Whatley is surging as voters rally behind a proven conservative fighter.
“North Carolinians want lower taxes, safer communities, and a senator who will defend their values — not Roy Cooper, whose record includes releasing 3,500 felons early, vetoing tax cuts, and supporting radical policies like boys in girls’ sports.”
The North Carolina Democratic party declined to comment.
The Playbook interpreter
Readers of yesterday’s Playbook newsletter may have been mystified by a subheading that read, “dot ball,” on a piece about Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, often identified as the “blue dot” on electoral maps.
It’s an inside-baseball kind of story about changing voting methods. But the reference to a “dot ball” is a cricket term. It denotes a ball bowled that results in no score for the batting team and no out for the bowling team. It is so called because scorers record it with a dot.
It is, of course, not the only Britishism to have featured in recent months. If anyone has decoded “Mullah corner” from March 12, about the Iranian regime, then do let me know. Secrets had a chuckle at that one but suspects most readers in the U.S. would have been none the wiser.
Quote of the day
Elon Musk delivered quite the flex Wednesday morning as he flew to Beijing as part of Trump’s delegation.
Zerohedge, the popular financial blog, posted on X that the high-powered delegation of chief executives, which included Tim Cook of Apple, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Larry Fink of BlackRock, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group, Kelly Ortman of Boeing, et al, amounted to about $20 trillion worth of CEOs on Air Force One, the Tesla founder shot back with a one-line post, underlining his place in the billionaire firmament: “Just Jensen and I are on AF1.”
Lunchtime reading
Inside Marty Makary’s downfall at the FDA: “Senior leaders in the White House increasingly concluded Makary was out of step with the president’s priorities on vaping and other policy issues, people familiar with the matter said.” Pharmaceutical industry insiders were also coming to the White House with complaints.
From boycotts to Boy George, Eurovision is back: The camp European song contest is held this weekend. Behind the songs, there are always geopolitical tensions. This time, they threaten to overshadow the whole thing.
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