With margin of error at +/- 3%, the Harris-Tim Walz ticket for Democrats leads Republicans’ Trump-J.D. Vance 48%-47%. The poll from the ECU Center for Survey Research has just 3% undecided, and a poll question on vice president picks shows selections of the Minnesota governor or the Ohio senator, respectively, was not detrimental with voters and if anything, more than affirmed their choice.

Mailing of absentee ballots was scheduled for Friday; a judge’s order may delay it in relation to litigation filed by former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Kamala Harris has shaken up the presidential election,” said Dr. Peter Francia, director of the poll at East Carolina University. “When Donald Trump’s opponent was Joe Biden, it seemed very likely that North Carolina’s electoral college votes would go again to the Republican presidential candidate for the fourth consecutive time. Now, that seems significantly less certain. The nomination of Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate has moved North Carolina squarely into the category of toss-up states.”

Throughout the campaign, from Biden to Harris, the Old North State has been lodged with six others as a consensus battleground. The seven states represent 93 electoral college votes among them. Pennsylvania has 19, North Carolina and Georgia 16 each, Michigan 15, Arizona 11, Wisconsin 10 and Nevada six.

Harris is trying to do more than break a four-cycle run in North Carolina. Since Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson carried the state and won the presidency in 1964, the 14 cycles since have had just two others from the party carry the state. And neither Jimmy Carter (1976) or Barack Obama (2008) could do it again four years later, with Carter ultimately becoming a one-term president and Obama surviving the setback to finish eight years in the White House.

Trump, scheduled to be in Charlotte on Friday to address the National Fraternal Order of Police, has won the state twice. In 2016 he beat Hillary Clinton 49.8%-46.2% and in 2020 he beat President Joe Biden 49.9%-48.6%. Former President Gerald Ford and Sen. John McCain are the dubious names of the last 60 years he’s trying to avoid joining.

On vice president choices, Trump supporters were 96% more likely to vote for him or the selection had no impact; for Harris supporters, 97% said they were more likely to vote for her or the selection had no impact.

On the matter of results accurately reflecting votes cast, 78% chose either “a lot of confidence” or “some confidence.”

The poll was conducted Aug. 26-28, the week after the Democratic National Convention. Sampling was of 920 likely voters, and the pollster says confidence level of results is 95%.

The tight presidential race is of no surprise, nor is the confirmation of separation by gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein against Mark Robinson. The Democratic attorney general began to lead and pull away in the summer, and Tuesday’s poll release has him up 47%-41% on the Republican lieutenant governor closely tied to Trump. Undecided is 11%, same as a June poll from ECU.

The poll asked about the most important issue in deciding votes. As has been the case all calendar year, money is the winner. The poll had 30% say inflation and the overall cost of living, and 22% said the economy in general. Abortion was third at 14%, a tick above border security (13%). Health care (4%) led the rest of the responses.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump is returning to the battleground state of North Carolina Friday to address a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police as he tries to portray himself as tougher on crime than his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the campaign’s closing months.

Trump is scheduled to address FOP’s National Board of Trustees fall meeting in Charlotte. The FOP, the world’s largest organization of law enforcement officers, endorsed Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, with its president saying on behalf of its 373,000 members that Trump had “made it crystal clear that he has our backs.”

The imagery of the former president and GOP nominee in a room of law enforcement officers offers Trump the platform to contrast their support with his characterization of Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general whom Trump has called the “ringleader” of a “Marxist attack on law enforcement” across the country.

“Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death,” Trump said last month in Michigan, one of many generalizations about an America under Harris. “You’ll see levels of crime that you’ve never seen before. … I will deliver law, order, safety and peace.”

Harris has showcased her status as a one-time top prosecutor in her home state, regularly saying “I know Donald Trump’s type” after she talks about the “perpetrators of all kinds” in her former roles.

She’s had some help with that messaging from two officers who were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and have become surrogates for the Democratic ticket, with both stumping for her at various events across the country and reflecting on that day.

“Three and a half years later, the fight for democracy still continues,” former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told a group of voters in Arizona this summer. “It still goes on. Donald Trump is still that threat. His deranged, self-centered, obsessive quest for power is the reason violent insurrectionists assaulted my coworkers and I.”

At the Democratic National Convention last month, former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell — who retired from the force in 2022 due to his injuries sustained that day — said Trump had “summoned our attackers. … He betrayed us.”

Trump’s courting of the support of law officers also butts up against the sympathies that Trump has shown for those who have defied the orders of police, including a pledge to pardon those charged with beating officers during the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol.

Judges and juries considering those cases have heard police officers describe being savagely attacked while defending the building. All told, about 140 officers were injured that day, making it “likely the largest single day mass assault of law enforcement” in American history, Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has said.

Over 900 people have pleaded guilty to crimes connected to Jan. 6, and approximately 200 others have been convicted at trial. More than 950 people have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds getting time behind bars — terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.

Trump has long expressed support for the Jan. 6 defendants. During a March rally in Ohio, he stood onstage, his hand raised in salute, as a recorded chorus of prisoners in jail for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack sang the national anthem. An announcer asked the crowd to please rise “for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.”

“Those J6 warriors, they were warriors, but they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said at a rally in Nevada this summer. He also falsely claimed that police welcomed rioters into the Capitol, saying they told the crowd, “Go in, go in, go in, go in.”

“What a setup that was,” Trump said. “What a horrible, horrible thing.”

The FOP hasn’t issued its official endorsement for the 2024 election, but other police groups have already lined up behind Trump. During another Charlotte rally, Trump in July won the endorsement of the National Organization of Police Organizations, whose leadership lauded his “steadfast and very public support for our men and women on the front lines.”

In February, the International Union of Police Associations endorsed Trump, calling his support for officers “unmatched.” Last month, he won the backing of the Arizona Police Association, just days after the group endorsed Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego over Trump ally Kari Lake in that state’s Senate race.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP

The Republican National Committee (RNC), the North Carolina Republican Party and a voter are suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) over its guidance to county election boards that an absentee ballot may be counted even if it isn’t submitted in a sealed container-return envelope.

It’s the latest RNC lawsuit targeting state voting procedures ahead of the 2024 race and third filed in the state over the past two weeks.

The plaintiffs argue the state board’s guidance directly conflicts with state election law on counting absentee ballots. Specifically, state law stipulates that an absentee ballot must, among other things, be received by the appropriate county board of elections in a sealed container-return envelope to be counted by that board.”

Before filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say they submitted a request in May for a declaratory ruling from the NCSBE on the matter. North Carolina law allows an aggrieved person to request a declaratory ruling from a state agency.

The agency responded in August, the complaint said, stating in part that while a second return envelope is required for the absentee ballot, the envelope doesn’t specifically have to be a container-return envelope, so long as it’s in a sealed envelope. The plaintiffs said state law is clear that ballots “must be placed in the container-return envelope which, in turn, must be sealed.”

The plaintiffs are asking a state court to reverse the NCSBE’s ruling and issue a declaratory judgment stating that the only type of envelope that qualifies as a container-return envelope under state law is an envelope that satisfies all of the law’s requirements.

The RNC has brought 14 anti-voting lawsuits challenging voter roll maintenance, canvassing absentee ballots and a host of other procedural issues that impact voting and elections. 

Read the lawsuit here.

Read more about the case here.