North Carolinians want nonpartisan redistricting

Published February 23, 2016

by Tom Jensen, Public Policy Polling, February 18, 2016.

Redistricting has been the biggest news in North Carolina politics of late and voters across party lines agree- they want the process to change. 59% of voters in the state want the law changed so that districts are drawn in a nonpartisan fashion, compared to only 9% who are opposed to such a move. There’s a strong bipartisan consensus on the issue, with Democrats (65/6), independents (56/12), and Republicans (54/11) all thinking there should be a change over to a nonpartisan process.

The race for Governor continues to bounce back and forth between small leads for Pat McCrory and Roy Cooper. This month the incumbent has the slight edge, with McCrory getting 43% to 41% for Cooper. That’s thanks largely to McCrory having a 39/33 advantage with independents. The basic contours of the race remain unchanged. McCrory is unpopular, with only 40% of voters approving of him to 47% who disapprove. But Copper is relatively unknown, with a 46% plurality of voters having no opinion about him one way or another. He has a positive 32/22 favorability among those voters who are familiar with him.

“North Carolina continues to have the most competitive Governor’s race in the country,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Sometimes McCrory’s up and sometimes Cooper’s up but it’s never by more than a couple points either way. This one is likely to go down to the wire.”

There’s not much intrigue in either party’s primary for Governor. McCrory’s getting 69% in his primary to 5% for Robert Brawley and 4% for Charles Moss. And Cooper’s getting 55% in his primary to 12% for Ken Spaulding. In both cases those numbers are almost identical to what we found last month- there’s no indication of the challengers gaining traction. On the extremely off chance Spaulding were to win the primary, McCrory leads him by 12 points at 44/32.

The US Senate race is looking a little bit tighter this month, with Richard Burr leading his prospective Democratic opponents by only 6-7 points. He’s up 43/37 on Deborah Ross, and 43/36 each on Kevin Griffin and Chris Rey. The competitiveness of the race is a function of Burr’s lack of popularity. Only 29% of voters say they approve of the job he’s doing, to 40% who disapprove.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_NC_21816.pdf