A TIPP survey of North Carolina voters finds Dem former Governor Roy Cooper leading former RNC chair Mike Whatley 48 to 24 percent and that is not a typo. MAGA site Daily Signal literally writes that Cooper “has a commanding 48 percent to 24 percent lead, with 27 percent still undecided.”

The simplest and likeliest explanation is that the pollster left the candidates’ respective parties out of the question, leading to the result that’s probably far more skewed by Whatley’s lack of name ID than anything else. That current Dem Gov Josh Stein’s approval is at 48 percent to 22 percent disapprove and 30 percent undecided track with it in that it seems that roughly the same share of North Carolinians don’t know who leads their state nor the name of his immediate predecessor.

Yes, that’s a sad fucking statement on the electorate, lol, and one that you can be pretty confident in its general accuracy since convicted felon President Trump’s approval is at 39 percent to 53 percent disapprove in the state, similar to most national surveys these days. Yet it says even more about the kind of voter the GOP relies on to put them over the top in an extremely crucial race: Assuming the question indeed was “Who do you plan to vote for in November’s Senate election, Roy Cooper or Mike Whatley?” and not “Who do you plan to vote for in in November’s Senate election, Roy Cooper (Democrat) or Mike Whatley (Republican)?” by literally a 2:1 margin more would-be Dem voters recognized Cooper and affirmed their support for him than MAGA voters did the same for Whatley.

Had the pollster not relied on them to at least think “Wait, Cooper’s a Democrat. I definitely remember that. Okay, so I’m voting for Mike Whatley since he’s a Republican. He’s the fat Black guy who likes trans porn, right? Whatever, still better than a woke Marxist” then you’d probably see something closer to like Cooper 49 to Whatley 43 in the head-to-head. Instead (probably) thanks to slightly bad polling design we ended up getting a uniquely valuable blind taste test result.

And if this is too much speculation for you then by all means let’s hear why Cooper leads by 24.