Update: Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties we were not able to webcast or record this event.

The third and final forum featuring the Libertarian candidates for U.S. Senate will be held Sunday, May 4 in Wilmington.

The New Hanover Libertarian Party is sponsoring this event. It will be held at the Cape Fear Country Club, 1518 Country Club Rd, beginning at 2 p.m., with Tim D'Annunzio and Sean Haugh attending.

A recent poll of likely voters conducted by the Civitas Institute showed that the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate could draw 8 percent of the vote statewide, and more than double that, 19 percent, in the Triangle in the fall election. Forty-three percent of the respondents said they'd vote for the Democratic candidate, 38 percent for the Republican and 11 percent were undecided. 

The first forum was held in Durham April 6, at the Libertarian Party's state convention. The second forum was held at UNC-Asheville April 27, sponsored by Young Americans for Liberty. This event was the only multi-partisan candidate forum of the primary season. It included candidates from all three state-recognized parties. Republican Alex Bradshaw and Democrat Ernest Reeves joined D'Annunzio and Haugh as participants.

This election will be only the second primary in the state Libertarian Party's history. 

The Wilmington Libertarian forum is free and open to the public. If you cannot attendyou can watch the live webcast on the LPNC YouTube channel. As with the two previous forums, you can also submit questions online via Twitter to hashtag #LPNCSenate. 

The U.S. Senate candidate forum question hashtag is #LPNCSenate. 

The LPNC Twitter handle is @LPNC. 

The URL for the event is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuwzDnvN4AE. 

More on the Civitas Poll

The poll also indicated that state House Speaker Thom Tillis was the preferred Republican candidate in the Tuesday primary, the choice of 27 percent of respondents. However, 30 percent of those polled answered “don't know,” and another 13 percent responded “none/other/no one.” Mark Harris, a Charlotte pastor, was picked by 16 percent, and 13 percent preferred Cary physician Greg Brannon.

The poll, conducted by National Research, Inc. of Holmdel, N.J. April 19 and 21-22, has an error margin of plus or minus four percent. One-quarter of those polled were contacted via cell phone. 

All respondents were part of a fully representative sample of registered general election voters in North Carolina. For purposes of this study, voters interviewed had to have voted in at least one of the past two general elections (2010, 2012) or be newly registered to vote since November 7, 2012. 

Civitas conducts the only regular live-caller polling of North Carolina voters. For more information on Civitas polling, see http://www.nccivitas.org/category/poll/. 

The Civitas Institute is a policy institute based in Raleigh, N.C. More information is available at www.nccivitas.org, or contact Jim Tynen at (919) 834-2099 or [email protected].