Some Fearless Predictions, Sort Of | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: The article below appeared in John Hood's daily column in his publication, the Carolina Journal, which, because of Author / Publisher Hood, is inextricably linked to the John Locke Foundation.

    RALEIGH     It's the last week before North Carolina's first primary. I've put it off long enough, but now I have no real alternative but to issue some fearless predictions.

    Sort of.

    That is, I'm not sure that the following predictions should really be considered fearless. In preparing them, I used the same publicly available data - including three surveys of likely voters released in the past few days - that many other political observers have been examining. It is possible, therefore, that my views are closer to conventional wisdom than to audacious punditry.

    Also, I reserve the right to change my predictions by next Tuesday. A political bombshell may drop between now and then. As the events of the past few weeks have demonstrated, North Carolina politics can be a wild and wacky enterprise.

    With that said, then, here are my perhaps-not-so-fearless perhaps-not-final predictions (contests with CJ coverage are hyperlinked):

    • Marriage Amendment. It will almost certainly pass, by a majority of between 55 percent and 60 percent of the vote.

    • Governor. Thanks to a couple of weeks of nearly unanswered broadcast ads, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton is likely to beat former U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge for the nomination to face Republican Pat McCrory in the fall. Dalton's share of the Democratic primary vote will probably end up in the mid-40s. There is an outside chance Etheridge, Bill Faison, and others may outperform the current trend, holding Dalton below the 40 percent threshold and forcing a runoff. Seems doubtful.

    • Lt. Governor. Former state Rep. Linda Coleman will defeat state Sen. Eric Mansfield for the nomination. On the Republican side, the most probable scenario is a July runoff between House Speaker Pro Tem Dale Folwell and businessman/architect Dan Forest.

    • State Treasurer. Incumbent Democrat Janet Cowell will be on the ballot again in the fall, probably against Republican Steve Royal.

    • Agriculture Commissioner. Incumbent Republican Steve Troxler will be on the ballot again in the fall, but the Democratic contest between Scott Bryant and Walter Smith is too close to call.

    • Labor Commissioner. I think that former Labor Commissioner John Brooks and Ty Richardson will proceed to a runoff for the Democratic nomination to face Republican incumbent Cherie Berry.

    • Secretary of State. Former Wake County Commissioner Kenn Gardner has a chance of getting to the 40 percent cutoff, but an equally probable scenario is that he'll head to a runoff with Ed Goodwin, Chairman of the Chowan County Commission. The winner will face incumbent Democrat Elaine Marshall in the fall.

    • State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Wake County school board member John Tedesco is leading the polls thanks to higher name recognition in the Triangle. Right now, however, it looks like he may fall short of 40 percent. If so, he'll likely face either Richard Alexander, a special education teacher, or Mark Crawford, a university instructor and former state representative. The winner will face incumbent Democrat June Atkinson in the fall.

    • Insurance Commissioner. Former House Co-Speaker Richard Morgan is leading the Republican primary, and may well beat the 40 percent mark. If he falls short, however, I can't predict whether Mike Causey or James McCall will meet Morgan in a runoff. The winner will face incumbent Democrat Wayne Goodwin.

    • State Auditor. The GOP contest seems destined for a runoff. Greg Dority and Debra Goldman are most likely to make the cut, followed by Fern Shubert. The winner will face incumbent Democrat Beth Wood.

    • Primary Turnout. A while back, I predicted that North Carolina's primary turnout this year would be about the average of the past six presidential-primary years - 25 percent. We don't have a competitive presidential contest, which drove the 2008 turnout to 37 percent. This feels more like 1996, when the most interesting race on the ballot was the Republican nomination to challenge Gov. Jim Hunt. The primary turnout that year was 22 percent.

    As it happens, when I constructed a model using WRAL and Public Policy Polling survey data and the Civitas Institute's handy Vote Tracker for early ballots cast, I came up with a projection of 23 percent. So I'll stick with a turnout prediction of somewhere in the mid-20s.

    There you have it. Naturally this column will disappear from CarolinaJournal.com on Election Night, and Men in Black agents will be visiting you to erase all traces of it from your memory.

    Unless I'm right.