N.C. Taxpayers Strongly Oppose Public Financing of Campaigns | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post, by Brian Balfour, was originally published in the Poll Results, Press Releases section(s) of Civitas's online edition.

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    Raleigh     Results from the Civitas Institute's latest poll show overwhelming opposition to North Carolina's program of taxpayer-funded political campaigns.

    "These latest poll results continue a trend of consistently high opposition to taxpayer funds being used to finance political campaigns," said Civitas Policy Director Brian Balfour. "We've polled this several times over the last few years and taxpayer-funding of political campaigns consistently measures as one of the most unpopular state policies on the books."

    Legislation (SB 541) introduced last month would eliminate the state's current programs providing taxpayer funds for state judicial and Council of State campaigns. These polling results show North Carolinians would strongly support such legislation.

    Text of question:

    Do you support or oppose a program that uses state taxpayer dollars to help pay for the political campaigns of judicial Council of State and other statewide candidates?

     21% Total Support
     70% Total Oppose
      8% Strongly Support
     13% Somewhat Support
     17% Somewhat Oppose
     53% Strongly Oppose
      8% Undecided/Don't Know

    Click here for crosstabs.

    About the Poll:

    This poll of 600 registered voters, of which 25% (150) were cell phone respondents, in North Carolina was conducted April 20-22, 2013 by National Research, Inc. of Holmdel, NJ. All respondents were part of a fully representative sample of registered general election voters in North Carolina. For purposes of this study, voters interviewed had to have voted in at least one of the past two general elections (2010, 2012) or be newly registered to vote since November 3, 2012.

    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."

    For more information on Civitas polling, see http://www.nccivitas.org/category/poll/.

    More information on the Civitas Institute is available at www.nccivitas.org, or contact Jim Tynen at james.tynen@nccivitas.org or (919) 834-2099.