Former two-term Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is leading his much lesser-known likely Republican opponent by just six points in the state’s 2026 Senate race, according to an early Emerson College poll released Friday morning.
The Emerson College survey found that Cooper received 47% support in the swing state’s blockbuster Senate race, while Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Whatley notched 41%. Twelve percent of voters said they were undecided, according to the poll.
Of those surveyed, 51% said they had a favorable view of Cooper — who led the state from 2017 to 2025 — 33% had a negative view of him, 13% were unsure and only 3% were not familiar with him. Meanwhile, Whatley secured a 17% favorability rating and 16% unfavorable rating, while 30% of respondents said they were unsure of the RNC chair and 36% were not familiar with him, according to the poll.
Additionally, on the generic 2026 congressional ballot test, the race is a statistical tie, with 41.5% of respondents supporting the Democrat and 41.3% supporting the GOP candidate, according to the survey.
Emerson College’s poll also showed that President Donald Trump had a 46% job approval rating in North Carolina, two percentage points higher than his 44% disapproval rating there.
In the 2024 presidential election, Trump notably won North Carolina by three points — with 50.9% of the vote, while former Vice President Kamala Harris notched 47.7%.
“With over a year to go until the North Carolina U.S. Senate race, Whatley’s low name recognition presents both a challenge and an opportunity, while only 17% view him favorably, nearly two-thirds of voters either don’t know him or are unsure,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement. “That leaves room for his campaign to define him before his opponent does. In contrast, Cooper enters the race with significantly higher name recognition and a more favorable public image.”
Whatley formally entered North Carolina’s highly-anticipated 2026 Senate race on Thursday with the president’s backing. The RNC chair, who previously served as the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, has already received several key endorsements in his Senate bid, including from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Tim Scott and Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
Additionally, the Thune-aligned Senate Leadership Fund wrote in a statement posted to X on Thursday that Whatley “will be an outstanding Senator for North Carolina and Senate Leadership Fund will proudly support his campaign every step of the way.”
The race to replace retiring Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis is anticipated to be a highly competitive and expensive one. Former Democratic North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel announced Tuesday that he was suspending his Senate bid, all but clearing the Democratic field for Cooper.
Cooper is notably viewed as a top recruit by Democrats. The former North Carolina governor raised $3.4 million in the first 24 hours of his Senate candidacy, Politico reported on Tuesday.
On Monday, some national Republican groups unveiled a $200,000 advertisement campaign slamming Cooper as “radical” and “woke.”
The Emerson College survey was conducted July 28 to 30. The overall sample of North Carolina registered voters, n=1,000, has a credibility interval, similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE), of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The Democratic Primary has a sample size of n=445 likely primary voters with a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.6%. The Republican Primary has a sample size of n=416 likely primary voters with a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.8%.
The data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, age, party registration, and region based on U.S. Census parameters and voter file data.
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