RALEIGH – A super PAC-backed poll released Sunday found Democrat Roy Cooper leading Republican Michael Whatley by 6.3 percentage points among likely North Carolina voters in the state’s open U.S. Senate race.
The poll by RedBox Research for A Fight Worth Having reported Cooper at 49.8% and Whatley at 43.5%. Libertarian Shannon Bray received 1.1%, Green Party candidate Michael Dublin received 0.5%, 3% were undecided, 1.7% preferred not to answer and 0.5% selected someone else.
A Fight Worth Having is an active unauthorized political committee registered with the Federal Election Commission, commonly called a super PAC. The group identifies RedBox Research as its polling unit. The survey was fielded Oct. 20-23 and released Oct. 25.
The methodology says 3,292 interviews were pooled from a statewide draw and voter-file draws in North Carolina’s 1st and 11th congressional districts. Voters received text invitations to a self-administered English-language web survey. Results were weighted by registration, gender, age, district, education, race and ethnicity, recalled 2024 vote and district share of the electorate.
RedBox reported an effective sample size of 684 after accounting for a design effect of 4.81. The overall margin of error was plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, while the methodology estimates about 7.2 points for the Cooper-Whatley margin. The pollster described the 6.3-point lead as within the margin of error. Sixteen interviews were excluded because a selection probability could not be determined.
A separate Carolina Journal poll released Oct. 22 found Cooper at 49.4% and Whatley at 39.1% among 600 likely voters interviewed Oct. 18-20. The surveys used different samples and methods, so the Carolina Journal result provides context rather than independent validation of RedBox’s findings.
Poll results are snapshots of the electorate during their field periods, not forecasts of the Nov. 3 election.
Sources
- A Fight Worth Having: North Carolina poll results
- RedBox Research: methodology
- Carolina Journal: October 2026 poll article
Photo Credit: Roy Cooper photograph by Staff Sgt. Mary Junell, North Carolina National Guard, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Michael Whatley photograph by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Images cropped and resized.
Editor’s Note: This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence and was reviewed and fact-checked by a member of the NC Political News editorial team before publication.