GREENVILLE – A new East Carolina University poll released Sunday puts Democrat Roy Cooper ahead of Republican Michael Whatley in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, 54% to 45%, as the candidates approach the Nov. 3 election.
The survey’s detailed toplines report 54.0% for Cooper and 44.9% for Whatley. Libertarian Shannon Bray received 0.8%, and Green Party candidate Michael Dublin received 0.3%. The combined question includes respondents who had already voted and requires a candidate choice from those initially undecided.
ECU’s published materials disagree about the fieldwork’s closing date. The news release says interviews ran Oct. 26-29; the linked toplines and transparency disclosure list Oct. 26-30. All identify a sample of 1,041 North Carolina registered voters screened as likely voters or people who had already voted.
The release describes a mixed-mode survey using 508 cell-phone text-to-web responses, 236 landline interactive-voice responses and 297 online-panel responses. The panel supplemented younger, Hispanic and African American respondents. ECU reports weighting by demographic characteristics and party identification.
The university reports a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. That model-based precision measure should not be described as a conventional probability-sample margin of error for a survey that includes an opt-in panel.
The toplines show 56.9% of respondents had already voted, while 43.1% said they were very likely to vote. Those are shares of the survey sample, not statewide turnout figures or certified election results.
Cooper and Whatley are competing for the seat held by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who is not seeking reelection. Independently reported coverage by WRAL identifies Senate control as a central consequence of the open-seat contest.
The results are a snapshot of the surveyed electorate, not a prediction or an election outcome. The discrepancy in ECU’s field dates remains unresolved in its published documents.
Sources
- https://surveyresearch-ecu.reportablenews.com/pr/ecu-poll-cooper-leads-whatley-by-9-points-as-election-day-nears
- https://www.wral.com/news/nccapitol/cooper-whatley-make-final-appeals-before-end-of-early-voting-friday-october-2026/
- https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/oRxMgQSfTMyMMqC7wEku
Photo Credit: File photographs: Roy Cooper, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Mary Junell/North Carolina National Guard, July 25, 2019, public-domain federal-duty photograph; Michael Whatley, Gage Skidmore, Aug. 30, 2026, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photographs cropped and resized; photographic composite CC BY-SA 4.0. NCPN logo is a separate brand mark.
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.