No significant change in direction of country or president
Published November 23, 2017
High Point University Poll, November 21, 2017.
The High Point University Poll finds that 33 percent of North Carolinians approve of how President Donald Trump is doing his job, and a large majority continue to express concern that the country is on the wrong track.
More than half (54 percent) of North Carolina residents say they disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president, compared to 52 percent of North Carolinians who said the same thing about President Obama in October 2010, which is the first year the HPU Poll conducted presidential approval surveys.
About two-thirds (65 percent) of North Carolinians say the country is on the wrong track, and 23 percent now say that the country is headed in the right direction. Approximately 71 percent said the same thing in the poll results released in October 2010.
“We have seen remarkable consistency this year in how the residents of our state rate the direction of the country as well as President Trump’s job performance. The views expressed by North Carolinians are quite similar to what we saw near the beginning of President Obama’s first term when we first started polling,” says Martin Kifer, director of the HPU Poll and associate professor of political science. “We’ll watch closely in the new year to see if these views shift in response to any new, dramatic events.”
All adults – Country Direction (November 2017)
Do you think things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track?
Right direction – 23 percent
Wrong track – 65 percent
Don’t know/refuse – 12 percent
(All adult (North Carolina residents) sample surveyed November 10-16, n = 469 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.5 percent)
All adults – Presidential Job Approval (November 2017)
Do you approve or disapprove of the way that Donald Trump is handling his job as president?
Approve – 33 percent
Disapprove – 54 percent
Don’t know/refused – 13 percent
(All adult (North Carolina residents) sample surveyed November 10-16, n = 469 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.5 percent)
The most recent HPU Poll was fielded by live interviewers at the High Point University Survey Research Center calling on Nov. 10-16, 2017. The responses from a sample of all North Carolina counties came from 469 adults with landline or cellular telephones. The Survey Research Center contracted with Survey Sampling International to acquire this sample. The survey has an estimated margin of sampling error of approximately 4.5 percentage points for all adult respondents. The data is weighted toward population estimates for cellular and landline telephone use, age, gender, education and race. In addition to sampling error, factors such as question wording and other methodological choices in conducting survey research can introduce additional error into the findings of opinion polls. Details from this survey are available at http://www.highpoint.edu/src/files/2017/11/55memoA.pdf.
Further results and methodological details from the most recent survey and past studies can be found at the Survey Research Center website at http://www.highpoint.edu/src/. The materials online include past press releases as well as memos summarizing the findings (including approval ratings) for each poll since 2010.
The HPU Poll reports methodological details in accordance with the standards set out by AAPOR’s Transparency Initiative, and the HPU Survey Research Center is a Charter Member of the Initiative. For more information, see http://transparency.aapor.org/index.php/transparency.
You can follow the HPU Poll on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HPUSurveyCenter. Dr. Martin Kifer, chair and associate professor of political science, serves as the director of the HPU Poll, and Brian McDonald serves as the associate director of the HPU Poll.
