Public Policy Polling has a new poll out on the Democratic primary race for Governor. It is, as they note, “about as low key an election for a major office as you could ever imagine” with the percentage of undecided voters actually increasing over the past month. For now, former U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge leads (26 percent), followed by Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton (15 percent), Bruce Blackmon (5 percent), Gary Dunn (4 percent), Rep. Bill Faison (3 percent), and Gardenia Henley (2 percent). Support for Etheridge and Dalton is highly regionalized.
There’s no reason to expect those numbers to change much until the candidates start spending money on TV time, which might happen two or three weeks before the May 8 primary. The question is whether the ads will change the competitive landscape. In particular, will Bill Faison, a Chapel Hill trial attorney, be willing and able to write a big enough check to get himself known and liked enough to force a runoff. He certainly has a lot of ground to make up…
