The InsiderAdvantage poll of 894 registered voters in North Carolina, weighted for age, race, gender, and political affiliation, was conducted Monday night, June 22 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.
InsiderAdvantage accurately polled North Carolina for the Washington-based news organization Politico in the fall elections, showing Barack Obama the likely winner of the state.
President Obama remains relatively popular in North Carolina. Fifty percent of respondents said they had a favorable opinion of his job performance, while 37% had an unfavorable view. The rest were undecided.
It went downhill from there. Gov. Bev Perdue had a 36% favorable view of her job performance, with a 56% unfavorable view, with the rest undecided.
The state’s two US senators weren’t strong either. Sen. Richard Burr had only a 39% favorable job performance rating, while 31% said they had an unfavorable view of the job he’s doing. Thirty percent had no opinion.
“That’s not unusual” said InsiderAdvantage CEO and nationally syndicated columnist (Creators Syndicate) Matt Towery. “Senators usually draw a high percentage of undecided respondents this far out from their last election. People just don’t see them everyday on TV. Once they run for reelection and take to the airwaves, those undecided numbers decrease.
“I would say that these early numbers suggest that people are generally not enthusiastic about their elected officials, and Sen. Burr will have to mount a spirited campaign when he runs in 2010,” said Towery.
The state’s newest US senator, Kay Hagen, has even deeper problems. While 39% of respondents had a favorable view of her job performance, an equal 39% had an unfavorable opinion, with the remainder undecided.
Said Towery, “I think because she is the Democrat who is better known for the moment because of all of the ads she ran in order to win, Sen. Hagen is being hit for her association with national issues that are not going over big in North Carolina.”
The biggest of those is healthcare. “We did not ask about healthcare or energy until after we asked the job performance questions,” said Towery. “We did not want that to taint the approval ratings. We also did not describe specific proposals, as some pollsters have attempted to do. What a poll does is to measure the public’s impressions, not attempt to educate them or lead them to some specific, detailed conclusion.”
On the issue of healthcare reform the question was: “In general, what is your opinion as to the healthcare proposals, as you understand them to be, that are being advocated by President Obama and the Democratic leadership of the Congress?”
Forty-five percent said they favor the proposals, while 51% said they opposed them. The rest were undecided.
When asked about their opinion of “energy proposals” being advocated by President Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership, again, 45% said they supported the proposals, with 46% saying they were opposed. The rest were undecided.
“I was taken aback by all of these numbers” said Towery, whose firm was recently named by polling aggregator and predictor Nate Silver as one of the three most accurate national pollsters for the 2008 presidential contest.
“Clearly the voters are unhappy with political leaders, be they Democrat or Republican,” Towery said. “There appears to be no clear mandate for either of the Obama administration’s big issues, and independent voters oppose both measures strongly. That is the swing vote that determines elections in North Carolina.”
