North Carolina's national image declines

by Public Policy Polling, September 5, 2013.

Two years ago PPP did national polls assessing the favorability of every state in the country. While southern states generally found themselves toward the bottom of the list, North Carolina was an exception. It polled among the ten most popular states in the country, with 40% of voters rating it favorably to only 11% who had an unfavorable opinion.

North Carolina's national image has seen a strong shift in a negative direction since that time. Its favorability has dropped from 40% to 30%, while the share of voters with an unfavorable opinion of it has more than doubled from 11% to 23%. Its +7 favorability rating would have ranked it 40th in our national study of state popularity in 2011, rather than its top 10 popularity at that time.

The state's national image has seen particularly large declines with racial minorities and women. In 2011 North Carolina stood out in the south as a state African Americans had a positive opinion of, at a 42/8 favorability rating. Now blacks see it negatively by a 19/30 spread. It's a similar story with Hispanics- they gave the state a positive 50/9 favorability in 2011, now it's a negative one at 20/39. There's also been a steep decline with women. They gave the state a net +32 favorability in 2011 at 40/8, but that's dropped all the way down to +3 at just 25/22.

Predictably the biggest hit in North Carolina's national image following this legislative session has been with Democrats. Their view of North Carolina has dropped a net 38 points from +18 (35/17) a couple years to -20 at 18/38 now. What's interesting though is the state has gotten less popular with Republicans too- it had a +42 favorability at 48/6 in 2011 and that's declined now to +28 at 41/13.

We know from repeated polling over the last few months that North Carolinians are very unhappy with what's happened to their state this year. The national polling makes it clear that the rest of the country feels the same way.