Red Clay Citizen

Civitas Poll: Buyer's Remorse? McCrory 46 - Perdue 32

Are NC voters suffering from a bit of buyer's remorse on Governor Bev Perdue?

It appears so according to our latest poll results where Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory leads Gov. Bev Perdue 46% to 32% in a hypothetical matchup.

McCrory leads among Republicans (80-7) and Unaffiliateds (45-28), while Perdue is only garnering a bare majority of her own party’s support (52-21).

On a generic re-elect test, only 26 percent of voters say they would vote to re-elect Perdue.  55 percent said no.

Full text of questions:

If the election for Governor were held today, would you vote to re-elect Bev Perdue?

Yes – 26%
No – 55%
Not Sure – 19%

If the election for Governor were held today and the candidates were Republican Pat McCrory and Democrat Bev Perdue, for whom would you be voting?

McCrory – 46%
Perdue – 32%
Not Sure – 22%

Click here for full results and crosstabs.

Polling Coming this Week

We released Gov. Perdue's favorability rating today (30%) and we'll have much more on her unpopularity this entire week. 

Tomorrow, we'll have a look at voters' opinion of her tax package.

Thursday, we'll look at whether voters are having "buyers remorse" and how she'd fare if the election were held today.

And maybe this week a little something on bringing California and Gray Davis to North Carolina.

Stay tuned.

Health Care Polling

We were in the field last week for our monthly polling and sent out a release today on health care. The subject is complicated but not so much that ordinary voters don't get it. What they want is simple:

1. Affordable health care

2. No tax increase

3. No government run health insurance

Read the release and see for yourself. Particular #3 - retirees and those over 66 don't trust a government run heath insurance plan more than other groups. Wonder why that is? Could they know something about government health care that we don't?

Gallup Poll: Americans Becoming More Conservative

Some interesting findings from Gallup today:

Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven't changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.

Sounds like an interesting question to ask.  I think we'll put it in our next NC poll in a few weeks. 

We've already shown that NCers consider themselves conservative at a higher percentage than the population nationwide, so it'll be interesting to see if they are moving that way as well.

Perdue's Approval Rating Lower than Sanford's?

As bad as the past week has been politically for SC Gov. Mark Sanford, a SurveyUSA poll released over the weekend shows him with higher job approval ratings than NC Gov. Bev Perdue.

According to SurveyUSA, 32% approve of Sanford's job as Governor.

When PPP polled Perdue in June, only 30% of voters approved of her job as Governor. (We haven't done job approval numbers since April, which is why I used PPP -- that and both SUSA and PPP are IVR firms.)

Maybe Perdue needs a good ol' fashioned scandal to rally her poll numbers.  Anyone want to start digging on why she fired the head of the Highway Patrol?

Civitas Poll: Don't Ban Bags

Despite the NC Senate giving final passage to SB 1018 last night, a majority of North Carolina voters do not agree with the General Assembly banning the use of plastic shopping bags at grocery stores and retailers.

According to Civitas' latest poll, 58 percent of voters disapprove of the ban.  Only 31 percent support it.

Amazingly, the lowest percentage of support is from the Northeast section of the state (252 area code) -- the portion of the state affected by the ban.  (The watered down version of the bill went from a statewide ban, to a ban in three counties, to a ban on just the barrier islands in Currituck, Dare and Hyde counties).

The full press release and crosstabs are here.

Civitas Poll: State Now Headed in Wrong Direction

One of the questions we ask each month is a baseline question about whether voters think the state is headed in the right direction or gotten off on the wrong track.

For most of last year, as the economy went south, wrong track was outpacing right direction hitting a low of 33-52 (-19 points) in our October 2008 survey.  Then in our November poll, immediately after President Obama's victory, the tide suddenly turned back around as voters' apparent optimism for the new administration led them to say it was headed in the right direction despite the economic situation (42-41).

That spread opened up to 49-38 right direction over wrong track in January and has been at about a 10 point margin until this month.

In our May poll, voters now say the state is back headed in the wrong track (42-48).

A couple of things contributing to this:
1. The "honeymoon" for Democrats not named Barack Obama appears to be over.  While Obama is still maintaining high approval ratings, the generic ballot test has fallen back to the normal spread (D+3).

2. Voters are beginning to separate their still positive feelings for Obama with the economic conditions in our state.  Unemployment continues to rise, the governor issued a pay cut for state employees and teachers, and the General Assembly is pondering massive tax increases, setting the state for some unpopular activities by government.  (And I think the Easley scandals are playing into the equation a little as well).

Civitas Poll: Only Half of NC Voters Think Global Warming is Man Made

Despite repeated claims that “the debate is over” only one-half of voters in North Carolina believe global warming is caused by human activity according to a new poll released today by the Civitas Institute.

According to 600 sampled voters, when asked if they thought global warming was caused more by human activity, long-term changes in Earth’s atmosphere or that global warming doesn’t exist, 49.5 percent of voters said human activity was the cause of global warming.  22.8 percent responded changes in atmosphere while 15.2 percent said it did not exist.  12.2 percent were not sure.

As a follow up, voters who said global warming existed were asked if they thought global warming will pose a serious threat to their way of life.  Only 37 percent said yes.

Nearly an identical number (38 percent) said they were willing to pay higher gas prices or utility bills to fight global warming.

Full press release here.

Death Penalty Popular in North Carolina

Our latest survey included a standard question about the death penalty. The results show support increasing from the last time we polled in 2008. Death penalty opponents are not going to go away because of broad public support for the Death Penalty. As Chris Hayes posted earlier on an article by Tara Servatius, opponents are already working on their next strategy for keeping killers off of death row.

Of course if you want to know the unfiltered opinion on the death penalty, read the comments at the bottom of thisWTVD story Support for death penalty strong in NC!

Civitas Poll: Perdue Favorability Slips

Gov. Bev Perdue's favorability rating continues to slide in our latest poll.

Her favorability rating dropped from 58-20 in March to 44-35 in April, a net change of 29 points.  That is a enormous decline for one month.  There almost seems to be a direct correlation between the state's unemployment rate and her favorability rating.  As unemployment goes up, the Governor's numbers get worse.

And we were in the field with our poll before she announced the 0.5% pay cut for teachers and state employees, so some of her base that were giving her favorable ratings may have reevaluated their position.

Fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver notes that low gubernatorial ratings are fairly widespread across the nation.

Still, the decline appears to be widespread enough that excuses like this just won't cut it -- America is unhappy with their governors. And why shouldn't they be, when nearly every state has a budget deficit, and governors -- unable to raise revenue as the Federal Government does through deficit spending -- are faced with the Hobson's choice of either having to raise taxes or cut essential services during a recession?

Perdue is surely feeling the effect of this and with budget and unemployment numbers worsening seemingly by the day, it's fairly safe to say she hasn't hit bottom yet.

Stay tuned for next month, this could get interesting.

Full release and crosstabs here.