Dispatches from the campaign trail, October 23, 2014

• The campaigns of 7th District Congressional candidates Jonathan Barfield (Democrat) and David Rouzer (Republican) have new ads on YouTube.

Barfield:

Rouzer:

• Early voting opens today! Find an early voting site and the hours it will be open at your county Board of Elections site using this portal.

• Speaking of early voting, in Carolina Journal Online this morning, Barry Smith reports that the NC NAACP may have plans to cause trouble at early voting sites.

• A new WRAL poll by Survey USA finds Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan holding a 3-point lead over Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis, 46-43. The first three questions survey “likely voters,” and at this stage of an election cycle, because they tend to show up at the polls, those responses are considered more valuable than the remainder of the poll, which samples either “registered voters” or “adults.”

• U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., who was Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president in 2012, campaigned Wednesday with Tillis in Union County.

• In an interview with Time Warner Cable News, Democratic 2nd Congressional District candidate Clay Aiken defended charges in a recent ad he made against incumbent Rep. Renee Ellmers, even though FactCheck.org said the charges weren’t true.