Why do you see NC as toss-up rather than Lean or Likely R?
This early out, I'm really leery of putting incumbents at anything more than tossup. In fact, I'm always leery of doing it before primaries.
Though I will admit, the polls on both North Carolina Gov and Nebraska Senate suggest more of a Lean R than tossup, Nebraska depending on the candidate. Polls out this far only give us generalized views, though.
You have to hedge a lot at this point, though I must admit that right now Republican candidate recruitment looks a lot better than Democratic recruitment.
Is there any evidence that incumbents have an advantage
controlling for polling? My guess is they don't - most of their advantage is already reflected in the polling, so if they're trailing early, they're in real trouble.
