North Carolina electors rehearse in the North Carolina State Capitol building in Raleigh, N.C. (Jonathan Drake/Reuters)

A week from today, voters in two of North Carolina’s congressional districts will go to the polls for special elections to the U.S. House.

In the third district, voters will select the replacement for the late Representative Walter Jones. Republican state representative Greg Murphy is taking on former Greenville mayor Allen Thomas. This is the sort of district a Republican should win easily; Trump carried the district by 23 points, and Jones, who often won with more than 65 percent of the vote, was unopposed in 2018. A new survey by the right-leaning site Red Racing Horse Elections finds Murphy ahead by a margin of 51 percent to 40 percent.


That’s the good news for Republicans. The less-reassuring news comes in the state’s ninth congressional district, where the 2018 election results were not certified due to irregularities involving requests for absentee ballots, unreturned absentee ballots, and individuals who illegally collected absentee ballots. This race matches up Republican Dan Bishop against Democrat Dan McCready, in a seat that Republicans have held since 1963 — but the uncertified results of 2018 put the GOP’s Mark Harris ahead by just 905 votes. President Trump will hold a rally in the district the night before the special election. Outside analysts are rating the race a toss-up, with perhaps a slight edge to Bishop. The race is another familiar case of trying to guess which side’s base is more likely to come out and vote in a special election. Red Racing Horse Elections says they will release survey results for this race later today.

UPDATE: The new RRHE survey finds Republican Dan Bishop barely ahead of Democrat Dan McCready, by a margin of 46 percent to 45 percent, “well within the poll’s 4% margin of error.”