Democrat Roy Cooper maintained a double-digit lead over Republican Michael Whatley in the race for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat, according to a new poll from Elon University. 

While Cooper’s 11-point lead remained unchanged, the share of undecided voters increased, as did support for third-party candidates, according to the poll released Thursday. 

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Cooper was favored by 49% of likely voters, down from 53% in a previous Elon poll released last month. 

In the new poll, Whatley was favored by 38% of likely voters, down from 42% last month. 

Eight percent of likely voters were undecided, up from 2% last month. Two percent of voters favored Libertarian Shannon Bray, even with last month’s poll. Green Party candidate Michael Dublin had support from 2% of respondents, up from 1%.

The survey of 800 North Carolina adults was conducted from Aug. 21 to Aug. 31, and has a margin of error of 5.6 percentage points for likely voters.

Among registered voters polled, 49% favored Cooper, 36% favored Whatley, 14% said they were undecided or planned to vote for someone else and 2% said they did not plan to vote at all. In last month’s poll, 51% of registered voters said they favored Cooper and 35% favored Whatley. About 11% in last month’s poll said they were undecided or planned to vote for someone else and 3% said they didn’t plan to vote.

Seventy-one percent of registered voters in the latest poll said they had heard about Cooper, who was North Carolina’s governor from 2017 to 2025 and previously served 16 years as the state’s attorney general. That’s down from 84% in the poll conducted in July. About 47% of registered voters, meanwhile, said they had heard about Whatley, down from 53% in July. 

“Despite an increase in advertising, we measured relatively little movement over the last month in voter intentions about the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina, with Democratic candidate Roy Cooper maintaining a strong lead over Republican Michael Whatley,” Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll, said in a statement. “Now that we have passed Labor Day, campaigning will approach full velocity, offering some final opportunity for Whatley to increase familiarity and narrow Cooper’s lead in the race.”

The poll also gauged approval of Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein. 

Fifty-four percent of poll respondents said they disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, the same as July. Meanwhile, 31% approve, down five points from July. Elon University said Trump’s approval rating in this survey was the lowest recorded by its poll since he took office in January 2025.

Stein had a 40% job approval rating in the poll released Thursday, down from 46% in July. His disapproval numbers remained the same at 25%.

Issues important to voters

A majority of polled voters identified affordability issues as playing an important role in their voting decisions.

Eighty-six percent said inflation and cost of living were very important and 73% said the general economy and healthcare were very important.

According to Elon University, other very important issues identified by voters were taxes (66%), Social Security (64%), the candidates’ personal character (60%), immigration (54%), the war in Iran (50%) and the environment (43%).

Forty-nine percent of registered voters surveyed gave grades of “D” and “F” to the health of the nation’s economy. Thirty percent gave it a “C” grade and 22% gave it an “A” or “B” grade.

Early and absentee voting

The poll found that 51% of registered voters plan to cast their ballots during the early voting period that runs from Oct. 15 to Oct. 31. Thirty-five percent said they plan to vote in person on election day and 8% plan to cast their votes by mail.

North Carolina began mailing absentee ballots Sept. 4 to the nearly 50,000 people who have already requested them and will continue doing so for weeks to come as more requests come in. The final deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 20.

Stein vetoed a bill in August that proposed numerous changes to North Carolina’s elections laws, including eliminating a week of early voting from low-turnout elections such as primaries and runoffs.

Fifty-six percent of Elon University poll respondents said the length of the early voting period in statewide elections is about right. Eleven percent said the period was too short, 11% said it was too long and 22% were unsure.