Late-deciding voters could choose North Carolina's next attorney general, WRAL News poll shows

The race to become North Carolina's next attorney general will likely be decided by voters who were still undecided at the end of October, according to results of a new WRAL News poll.

Democrat Jeff Jackson leads Republican Dan Bishop 44% to 42% in a poll of 853 likely voters conducted Oct. 23-26. SurveyUSA conducted the survey on behalf of WRAL. This narrow margin is within the survey's credibility interval of 4.1 percentage points.

A credibility interval is similar to a margin of error but takes into account more factors and is considered by some pollsters to be a more accurate measure of statistical certainty.

However, the poll found that 14% of voters have not yet decided who they will vote for in the race for the state's top law enforcement official. The survey found that almost one in four registered non-voters was still undecided. Jackson and Bishop are running to replace current Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who is running for governor.

“The undecided voters there will either not vote at all or will simply stick with their party affiliation,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “Ultimately, if they don’t know much about the two candidates, it’s going to be a typical Republican versus a generic Democrat.”

In this case, Jackson could have a slight edge: 12% of registered Democrats say they are undecided, compared with 8% of Republicans.

“While the people who live and breathe this stuff might think it's crazy that someone couldn't know who Dan Bishop or Jeff Jackson is at this point, a lot of voters don't know,” Cooper said. “So they’re just going to use their partisan perspective to make the final vote.”

Jackson and Bishop are currently members of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Charlotte-area districts and previously served in the state legislature.

More than $30 million has been spent on the race by candidates and outside groups, including a barrage of television ads on both sides. Jackson has called it the most expensive AG race in the country's history. The last five attorneys general have run for governor, including current Gov. Roy Cooper, who was attorney general from 2001 to 2017.

The state's voters have not elected a Republican attorney general in more than 125 years, although a Republican was briefly appointed to the role in the mid-1970s.

Jackson led in two previous WRAL News polls, holding a 43% to 36% lead in September and a 41% to 40% lead after the March primary. Other recent polls showed a similarly close race, with Jackson holding a slim lead.

More than 3.1 million voters — more than half of 2020 voters and nearly 40% of all registered voters in 2024 — have already cast their ballots in North Carolina as of Tuesday afternoon.

As the campaign enters its final days, Bishop said he just wants to continue to spread his message.

“If you want your family to be safe, if you want your children and grandchildren to be safe, there is a way to do things differently,” Bishop told WRAL earlier this month. “A vigilante crime policy is not the answer. The evidence is there. We can restore law and order to North Carolina.”

Jackson told WRAL earlier this month that he would spend the last few days asking voters to give him a chance to win their support.

“If you listen to what I have to say about what I want to achieve with this job, if you read a little about my career and how I spent my life as a soldier and a prosecutor, you will probably see that “I have the qualifications,” Jackson said, “but I also bring the temperament that we really want in an attorney general.”