Civitas Poll: Voters Want Tax Protection | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post, by Jim Tynen, was originally published in the Budget & Taxes, Elections & Voting, Issues, Legislative Activity section(s) of Civitas's online edition.

    A new Civitas Poll of registered, unaffiliated North Carolina voters shows that an overwhelming majority of North Carolina Unaffiliated voters support an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution which would require a vote of two-thirds majority of both houses of the state legislature to approve all income tax rate increases.

    The poll found that 61 percent of respondents support this measure of accountability for the NC legislature and protection for themselves as taxpayers.

    This and other results from this poll will be discussed at a Civitas Poll Lunch this Thursday, Aug. 27, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the DoubleTree Suites — SouthPark in Charlotte. Attendees may register here.

    Following is the exact wording of the relevant question:

    Would you support or oppose an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution which would require a vote of two-thirds majority of both houses of the state legislature to approve all income tax rate increases?

61%	Total Support
27%	Total Oppose
35%	Strongly Support
26%	Somewhat Support
11%	Somewhat Oppose
16%	Strongly Oppose
13%	Don't Know/ No Opinion
-	Refused

    Crosstabs for poll here.

    About the poll: This poll of 600 registered unaffiliated voters in North Carolina was conducted August 10-12, 2015 by National Research, Inc., of Holmdel, NJ. All respondents were part of a fully representative sample of registered general election voters in North Carolina. Thirty percent of the respondents were cell phone-only users. For purposes of this study, voters interviewed had to have voted in at least one of the past two general elections (2012, 2014) or be newly registered to vote since November 1, 2014. The confidence interval associated with a sample of this size is such that: 95 percent of the time, results from 600 interviews (registered voters) will be within +-4% of the "True Values."