North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is trailing Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein in the state’s closely watched gubernational race, according to a new poll.

The ActiVote survey has Stein leading Robinson by eight points, 54 percent to 46 percent.

It was conducted among 400 likely voters between July 26 and August 26, and has an average expected error of 4.9 percent.

Several other polls conducted in August also have Stein leading Robinson by at least eight points, according to poll aggregator FiveThirty Eight.

A High Point University/Survey USA poll conducted among 1,053 registered voters between August 19 and 21 had Stein leading by 14 points, 48 percent to 34 percent.

The Stein and Robinson campaigns have been contacted for comment via email.

North Carolina’s gubernatorial race is expected to be close. The battleground state has voted Republican in recent presidential elections, but Democrats have won seven out of the eight governor’s races since 1992.

Stein is seeking to keep the governor’s office under his party’s control after two terms under outgoing Governor Roy Cooper, who described Robinson as “the most extreme statewide candidate in the country right now.”

Cooper told Politico earlier this month that he withdrew from consideration to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in part because he feared Robinson could try to seize power in his absence.

“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,” Cooper said.

Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first Black governor if elected, is a controversial figure with a history of attacks on women, Muslims, Jews and the LGBTQ+ community, and pushing conspiracy theories.

He has used words like “filth” and “maggots” when talking about the LGBTQ+ community and said in 2019 that mass shootings were “karma” for American’s support of abortion rights.

He also sparked criticism after saying that Black Americans are not owed reparations for slavery, saying: “If you want to tell the truth about it, it is YOU who owes!”

Former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Robinson in March, has called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

“In North Carolina, campaigns are decided by small margins in November,” Stein’s campaign manager Jeff Allen told Newsweek earlier this month.

“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.”