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By Alia Shoaib
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A new poll shows North Carolina's Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein ahead of Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson in the state's governor race.
The poll, conducted by Carolina Forward, shows Stein receiving 46 percent of the vote, while Robinson gets 36 percent.
The poll was conducted between August 5 and 9 of a sample of 802 voters, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percent.
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North Carolina is typically seen as a swing state with a slight conservative lean. It backed Trump by 1.3 percentage points during the 2020 presidential election, and has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 10 of the last 11 elections.
The same Carolina Forward poll shows Harris and Donald Trump neck-and-neck in the state with 46 percent of the vote each.
North Carolina's current governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, is not running again as he is term-limited and cannot seek a third consecutive term in office.
Cooper has been critical of Robinson, the Republican nominee, describing him as "the most extreme statewide candidate in the country right now," in an interview with Politico in early August.
Cooper was once floated as a possible candidate to be Kamala Harris' vice-presidential pick, but he withdrew from consideration, at least partly because of fears that Robinson would take advantage of his absence.
He said that Robinson had previously claimed to be acting governor while Cooper was out of the state for work engagements.
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"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. The attention he would get would be times 10 and it would be a distraction to the presidential campaign," Cooper said about Robinson.
Robinson has generated criticism for his controversial views on social issues.
He once described LGTBQ+ topics as "filth," in 2021 saying: "There's no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth."
Robinson, who is Black, has also generated criticism for lambasting what he described as the "so-called" Civil Rights Movement and criticizing Martin Luther King Jr., and for suggesting that Black people are not owed reparations for slavery, and in fact owe reparations themselves.
He also once said the movie Black Panther was a ploy for Jewish people to take money from Black people.
When Trump endorsed Robinson in the race, he referred to him as "Martin Luther King on steroids."
The latest poll follows the trend of other recent ones, which show Stein slowly increasing his lead.
Stein's campaign manager, Jeff Allen, told Newsweek in an emailed statement: "In North Carolina, campaigns are decided by small margins in November. Over the next three months, we will continue to work to earn every vote in every corner of the state so that North Carolinians know the clear choice in this race: Josh Stein, who fights for a safer, stronger North Carolina, versus Mark Robinson, who fights job-killing culture wars."
Newsweek reached out to Robinson's office via email.
Update 08/13/24, 11:46 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Jeff Allen.
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