Beasley vs. Budd: Who NC Voters will Choose
At the beginning of November, Crowd React Media conducted a survey to get an idea of who North Carolinians will vote for in the 2022 Midterm Elections. We narrowed our survey’s scope to the U.S. Senate contest between Democrat Cheri Beasley and Republican Ted Budd. We also asked voters about some of their media habits, and their past voting preferences.
In this CRM blog entry, we will walk you through our findings and methodology, and make a prediction as to the winner between Budd And Beasley.
To get us started, we spoke with 250 registered N.C. voters and asked if they are planning to vote in the upcoming elections. Let’s take a look at what we found.
Graph (Below): “Are you planning to vote or have you already voted in the upcoming North Carolina 2022 Midterm Elections?”
As you can see above, 68% plan to vote and 22% have already voted. That’s a good 90% of the registered voters we polled. This is a high level of potential voter turnout.
We asked these voters about their most important issues which inform their choices at the ballot box. The 2022 midterms are proving to be just as hotly contested and divisive as the previous General Election cycle in 2020. Some of the key issues to that election have seemingly taken a backseat to voters’ economic priorities in 2022. Here’s what came out of our results:
Graph (Below): “Which of the following issues/problems are most important to you?”
“Economy/Inflation” is the core concern for North Carolinians in the upcoming elections at 49%, 13% ahead of Healthcare and 15% ahead of issues surrounding abortion laws. Pundits speculated that abortion would galvanize a good chunk of voters and potentially change the course of the election in favor of the Democrats, but that energy seems to have diminished in the face of rising prices, high interest rates, and historic inflation. At 49%, “Economy/Inflation” is the current driver here.
It also looks like Republicans in North Carolina will be pretty pleased heading into the new congressional term as our poll indicates:
Graph (Below): Who do you plan to vote for U.S. Senator in the 2022 North Carolina Midterm Elections?
Of the 68% of N.C. voters planning to cast a ballot in the looming Midterm Elections, Ted Budd has the slight edge over Cheri Beasley, 45% to 42%. This however, is within the margin of error, and those 11% “Undecided” could ultimately give the matchup a decisive tilt. If we assume that Undecided splits around the same ratio as the current ballots that have been cast (see next slide) we can safely assume that Undecided voters will not skew heavily Democratic and will not change the results to favor Beasley.
The 22% of N.C. Voters who have already cast their votes, have done so overwhelmingly for the Republican Ted Budd. He leads Beasley 55% to 42%. Take a look at the following graph:
Graph (Below): “Who did you vote for U.S. Senator in the 2022 North Carolina Midterm Elections?”
These findings bolster our confidence in predicting that Ted Budd will defeat Cheri Beasley in the 2022 Midterm Elections for U.S. Senator.
In future entries, we will dive deeper into voters’ media habits and which Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte news stations they tune into, based on their political affiliation. Thanks for reading!
- Study conducted in early November, 2022.
- 250 Registered North Carolina Voters Ages 18+
