I know, it’s a running joke, right… But according to a new poll by ABC News, Tiger Woods’ favorable rating is higher than that of our own Gov. Bev Perdue.
In a basic measure of popularity, just 39 percent express a favorable opinion of Woods
overall, essentially unchanged from its level just before his apology and still vastly below its
peak, a remarkable 88 percent nearly 10 years ago.
According to our latest poll from February, only 38 percent of North Carolina voters had a favorable opinion of Perdue.
And if you remember back to last fall, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina during the aftermath of his “hiking expedition” had higher poll numbers than Perdue.
So do voters really think sex scandals aren’t as bad as raising taxes, cutting education and slashing teacher pay? Or is there just something else about Gov. Perdue they just don’t like?
In our poll this month, we once again tested voters’ opinion on privatizing the ABC system of government-run liquor stores. While we found increased support for privatization, some very deep divides emerged in the crosstabs that present some fairly large hurdles for privatization advocates to overcome.
While privatizing was supported by 47% of North Carolinians overall , it was opposed by 50% of African-Americans and 49% of people who consider themselves to be part of the “religious right.” Two quite powerful interest groups on opposite sides of the aisle.
Mainly, the fear of these groups is that removing government control from the ABC system will result in an increased availability and consumption of hard liquor.
Although it may be the most free-market solution, I think it’s unrealistic to think that North Carolina is going to go from the tightly-controlled limited access system we have now to one like many other states where liquor is available on every corner in convenience stores. The process of privatization will come through many steps.
Gov. Perdue is taking a good first step to determine the value of the assets of the system, but I think there is going to be little motivation for the General Assembly to tackle this monster during the short session. More than likely some minor ethics reforms will be passed to address the controversies in Wilmington and Charlotte and any major reform or privatization of the system will have to wait until 2011.
Full press release and crosstabs from this question from the poll here.
In our poll this month, we asked voters if Gov. Bev Perdue nicknaming herself as the “Jobs Governor” was an appropriate title for the Governor given her first year in office. Only 12% of voters said yes. 68 percent said no.
As for her favorability rating this month it comes in at a -5 (43% unfavorable, 38% favorable), about the same as it was in December (-5).
Perdue’s numbers have rebounded from her lowest points this summer when the rating was -14. This is mainly through her improved standing among Republicans where her unfavorables have fallen from a high of 72% in October to 56% now. Perdue is now back up at 50% favorable with members of her own party for the first time since April 2009.
Her overall favorability chart below:
Full press release with all the crosstabs here.
NC voters’ opinion of Pres. Barack Obama inched up in January and now is at 52% favorable, 37% unfavorable or a +15 spread, the widest its been since the beginning of the health care debate last summer.
Obama’s favorability rating basically fell off a cliff once the health care reform measure was launched last July bottoming out at a +3 in October and has been slowly climbing back off those lows. While his policies and proposals are widely opposed by NC voters, he still remains personally likable. But NC voters are separating their warm and fuzzy feelings for Obama the man and the icy cold feelings for his policies.
Chart of his favorable/unfavorable rating in NC:
If you missed the monthly poll luncheon yesterday at the Clarion, you missed out on probably the most interesting poll finding we’ve had in our nearly 5 years of polling.
We asked voters if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of our good friend, Dallas Woodhouse:
And interestingly enough, Dallas is actually more popular among Democrats than he is among Republicans.
In our poll this month, we asked Democratic and Unaffiliated voters if they had a preference in the Democratic Primary for the US Senate nomination, and by and large they do not have a preference yet. 75 percent of voters were undecided on any of the three announced candidates.
The breakdown was:
Marshall – 14%
Lewis – 7%
Cunningham – 4%
Undecided – 75%
I do have to point out, that in fairness, this is a poll of likely general election voters, not necessarily Democratic primary voters. But at this stage, none of the candidates have made a splash.
It is somewhat surprising too how low Cunningham is in the poll given how much attention was given to his wooing by the national Democratic Party. I guess it just goes to show how little average voters pay attention to things like that.
Ultimately, this race will probably be decided by whichever candidate can raise enough money to get on TV the earliest and the heaviest. It’s wide open now, but whoever puts the first TV ad up will probably jump out to a big lead.
Full press release here. Full crosstabs and the data here.
North Carolina voters are fairly evenly split on privatizing the ABC system versus keeping it state-run according to our poll for January.
47% say keep the government in charge.
44% say let private businesses run it.
This issue presents a bit of a double-edged sword for many rural legislators, especially Republicans. While just about everyone agrees that the system needs reform (see Performance Evaluation Division report here), there is a danger of alienating the conservative religious voters who do not want widespread availability of hard liquor.
Yes, NC is a changing state, but there are still many elements of the old Bible Belt still alive as this issue shows. Just take a look at the breakdown by religion:
Baptists say keep ABC system by a 57-35 margin. But Catholics favor privatization by a 66-23 margin.
Full press release here. Crosstabs and other fun data here.
The NC chapter of the NAACP has been quite vocal in its support of continuing the Wake County Public Schools policy of busing children across the county in order to achieve “diversity.” They have even gone so far as to introduce race-baiting terms like “resegregation” to the debate and more or less call opponents of diversity racists for wanting to change it.
However, a poll we conducted in November shows that the position supported by the NAACP is opposed by blacks in Wake County.
When asked if they supported the current policy of assigning students to schools to achieve diversity instead of sending students to schools closest to their home, 59.2% of black voters said they opposed the diversity policy.
That’s right, nearly 60% of blacks in Wake County would rather send their child to the school closest to them. Apparently there is a broad disconnect between the NAACP leadership and the parents who actually have children in schools. So instead of tossing around racist terms like its 1962, maybe the NAACP should stand with black parents who are putting their children on buses before the sun comes up to send them across the county to achieve little in the way of educational gain.
The current system is failing low income students of all races. Why not give something new and different a try before calling everyone a racist?
The full poll results for December will be released on the website tomorrow, but if you’ve missed any of the results so far, the press releases are up on our website here.
A couple of tidbits before the full poll comes out tomorrow:
Generic legislative ballot is back to a 3 point Democratic advantage after Republicans took a 1 point lead last month.
56% of North Carolinians say that the state is headed in the wrong direction. This has been fairly consistent over the last 4 months or so.
Improve the economy/create jobs continues to be the only issue out there that voters want addressed. 55% say it is the most important issue, followed by hold down taxes/spending at 14% and reduce health care costs at 10%.
This month we asked about the supposedly dreaded “v-word” (vouchers) in a very straightforward question — do you support or oppose giving parents vouchers to send their child to any school they choose. 67% of voters supported vouchers. Only 24% opposed. Among African Americans, the support goes up to 72%.
It doesn’t matter how you word the tax “reform” proposals being debated by the General Assembly, voters don’t like taxing services. In prior polls we had asked if voters supported or opposed reducing tax rates but extending taxes to things like auto repair, home repair, etc. This month we changed the wording on the question so that the tax rate reductions were the last thing respondents heard — “support or oppose extending sales tax to auto repair, home repair, etc. but reduce overall rate of sales and income taxes.” And guess what? Voters still don’t like it. 52% were opposed.
Again, full poll results tomorrow on the website.
Could a populist idea from the 1990s come back into debate today as a way to clean up corruption in government? According to our latest poll, yes.
73 percent of voters say they support term limits for members of the General Assembly. And when asked an open-ended question on what’s the best way to clean up corruption in North Carolina, the single answer most given was — term limits.
However, they do not want to go back to the pre-1976 limitation on the governor only serving one term. 49 percent oppose changing the limit back from 2 terms to 1 term.
Full release and crosstabs here.