RALEIGH, (SGRToday.com) - The Pat McCrory campaign for governor released results of polling it says shows the Republican incumbent governor leading his key Democratic rival, Attorney General Roy Cooper by 13 percentage points.

An email from Bill Lee, the pollster of the campaign, says results show McCrory with 49 percent to Cooper's 36 percent. Fifteen percent are reported as undecided.

According to the email:

1.   What follows are the obvious critical numbers from the survey.  Additional details will follow.  Per our discussion, we surveyed 800 respondents who participated in the 2012 or 2014 elections, plus new registrants, by both landline and cellphone.

Demographically, the survey reflects the following: Gender was Female 54%, male 46%. Ethnicity was 70% white, 26% African American.  Registration affiliation was 43% Democrat, 30% Republican, 27% unaffiliated.

2.   The two largest issues, jobs/economy and education, remain at the top of voter concerns.

3.   At this point prior to the formal initiation of the campaign, Pat McCrory leads Roy Cooper by a margin of 13%, 49% to 36%, with 15% undecided.

4.   Cooper has a notable name identification problem in that a full half of the state either doesn’t know him (25%) or has no opinion of him (25%), which makes us wonder what he’s been doing since being elected attorney general over 15 years ago.  He has 31% personal approval and 19% disapproval.

5.   Pat McCrory has only 17% who are not aware or do not know him.  His personal approval is 51% versus a disapproval of 32%.

6.   This survey has obviously been conducted prior to the beginning of any significant volume of public campaigning.  We should fully expect these numbers to narrow somewhat once ProgressNC and their outside liberal affiliates and partners in Washington, DC start spending large sums of money on North Carolina’s airwaves.