North Carolina’s Under-the-Radar Race Between Budd and Beasley Staying Tight

North Carolina GOP candidate for Senate, Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), celebrates his Republican nomination at a primary election night watch party at Kinderton in Bermuda Run, N.C., on May 17, 2022. Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

The race between Ted Budd and Cheri Beasley for North Carolina’s open Senate seat has stayed tight as it enters the last week.

It’s a competition that hasn’t gotten the attention that Senate races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, or Arizona have, but maybe it should have.

The seat of the retiring Richard Burr is one the Republicans want and need to hold to keep up their chances of edging ahead in the U.S. Senate, currently divided 50-50 with the Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris as its tie-breaking vote.

Budd, a Congressman backed by former President Donald Trump, has maintained a narrow lead in the polls but one at, or near, the margin of error.

Politics website FiveThirtyEight averaged Budd’s margin at 3.2 percent on Nov. 1.

RealClearPolitics puts his average margin at 4.5 percent and rates the race Leans GOP.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball has it leaning towards the Republicans.

North Carolina Democrat Senate candidate Cheri Beasley speaks to a crowd during an election night event in Raleigh, N.C., on May 17, 2022. Sean Rayford/Getty Images

“Though public polls often show both contests to be within the margin of error, our thinking for basically the entire cycle has been that North Carolina and Ohio would stay in the red column,” J. Miles Coleman wrote in Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

“Going down the home stretch, Republicans will be spending at least a few million more than Democrats in both states.”

Budd has some things in his favor, including North Carolina’s recent voting history.

The state’s politicos early on said this race would be won or lost in the suburbs, with rural voters firmly in the conservative Republican’s column and urban ones just as firmly aligned with the Democrat former chief justice of the state.

A new Wall Street Journal poll, though, shows white suburban women, a much-sought-after constituency nationally for both parties, have swung 26 points away from the Democrats since August.

Pollster Tony Fabrizio told the Journal that undecided voters show a high level of concern about the economy and appear more likely to break toward the Republicans if they vote.

Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, told The Epoch Times the state’s relatively small number of undecideds gives Beasley less chance to find a winning margin among them.

Paul Shumaker, a Republican strategist, told The Epoch Times, “the red wave is real” in North Carolina.

He tied Beasley’s steady lag in the polls to her party’s failure to use social issues like abortion and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade to mobilize voters and counter the Republicans’ message about the ailing economy.

North Carolina Democrat strategist Morgan Jackson told The Epoch Times this was “the sleeper race of the cycle,” which might have worked to Beasley’s advantage, helping her stay close.

Both candidates have kept a distance from certain significant figures in their respective parties.

Budd, despite his endorsement by Trump and the former president’s popularity in rural North Carolina, doesn’t talk about him a lot, Bitzer told NPR. 

Beasley hasn’t had President Joe Biden, his popularity ratings underwater, stump for her.

“That’s a key dynamic that Republicans do not need in these last few weeks of the election, is to have Donald Trump on the ballot. They want Joe Biden on the ballot,” Bitzer said.

“If Trump is on the ballot, that not only energizes Republicans, but it also energizes Democrats because they don’t want another Donald Trump clone to be in Congress.”

Former President Barack Obama endorsed Beasley and cut an ad for her last week but has not visited the state to stump for her. She did have rocker Dave Matthews appear at a rally with her, while Budd got a visit from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Budd was one of the first candidates Trump endorsed this cycle. He is much more conservative than the man he seeks to replace, Burr, who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment.

Burr, who announced in 2016 that he would not seek another term, has had his conservatism measured at 61 percent by Heritage Action, while Budd scored 98 percent.