Josh Stein’s Chances of Beating Mark Robinson, According to Polls

As North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson faces calls to suspend his gubernatorial bid, polling shows that his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, is leading the race as November inches closer.
Robinson is under pressure after CNN dropped a report Thursday tying the conservative to comments made on an adult website several years ago. Among the posts Robinson is accused of making on the site, “Nude Africa,” includes one where he called himself “a black NAZI.” In another post, made during the Obama administration, Robinson allegedly wrote, “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh** that’s in Washington right now!”
Robinson is the first black lieutenant governor of North Carolina and is running with former President Donald Trump’s endorsement. Some Republicans have called on Robinson to suspend his candidacy by the state’s deadline at the end of the day Thursday, although he has said that he intends to remain in the race.
When reached for comment, Robinson’s campaign directed Newsweek to the lieutenant governor’s video message shared to social media, in which he called CNN’s story “tabloid trash” and denied being behind the comments.
Stein, on the other hand, is running with the backing of current North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat and surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris who has reached his two-term limit in office. Stein has held the lead for weeks in the race against Cooper, including in a poll released Thursday by Emerson College and The Hill, which found that 48 percent of likely voters support the Democrat.
In comparison, Robison earned 40 percent of likely voters’ support, while 10 percent of the 1,000 respondents said they were undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points and was conducted between September 15 and 18.
Earlier in the month, in a poll by Quinnipiac University, Stein was leading the race 51 percent to 41 percent, based on the responses of 940 voters between September 4 to 8. A Fox News poll conducted between August 23 to 26 gave Stein an even greater lead, finding that the Democrat was leading Robinson 54 percent to 43 percent out of 1,000 registered voters.
Newsweek reached out to Stein’s campaign for further comment Thursday evening.
Robinson has been caught making inflammatory comments prior to Thursday’s report from CNN. In a 2019 Facebook post, the GOP candidate said that abortion in America was about “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” In 2021, prior to being elected lieutenant governor in 2022, Robinson described “homosexuality” and “transgenderism” as “filth” while speaking before a church.
Cooper told Politico back in August that he had withdrawn from being considered for Harris’ running mate because he feared that Robinson could build momentum in North Carolina in his absence.
“If I were to be out of state at a campaign event, if I had been the vice-presidential nominee, he could claim he was acting governor,” Cooper said at the time.