Is Pittenger in Trouble in NC-9?

Today, I did a little precinct walking in a heavily Republican precint, and one thing seemed rather clear to me.   Robert Pittenger's hyper-negative primary campaign against Jim Pendergraph may very well come back to haunt him. If the totally unscientific results from the many conversationss I had this afternoon hold anywhere close to the actual results, Pittenger's primary victory could turn out to be of the pyrrhic variety.

There were two consistent variations from straight party voting intentions in the answers to the survey questions being asked. One was straight party Democratic voting except where these voters chose Pat McCrory over Democrat Walter Dalton.   The other were Republicans wavering when picking a choice for Congress in NC-9.  Many, many were still 'undecided' rather than going with Pittenger.

Some in the second group were very clear as to why - Pittenger's negative primary campaign.

Here are some numbers. When Pittenger was on the ballot in '08 running for Lt Governor, he received 195,777 votes in the current NC-9 district.  That's probably his ceiling.  Of those, 97,253 were straight ticket votes. There were 72,774 straight Democratic ticket votes in that same district.  My guess is that 24k difference will be much smaller this time around.

That may not be enough to cost him the election.  However when you add to that the facts of Jennifer Roberts having high name recognition in Mecklenburg, Pittenger spending the first half of the year viciously attacking a popular figure in Jim Pendergraph, and the old mantra that "all politics is local", those could all add up to trouble.

One thing to look at when this election is over will be the number of undervotes in this race.  That will give some sense of how many Republicans just couldn't pull the lever for Pittenger on election day.