Civitas Institute

I attended an open house at the new John William Pope Civitas Institute on Wednesday and they produced some interesting results from their latest statewide poll. You can read through the poll results here, but to summarize, NC is a pretty conservative state, but that conservatism is not translating into electoral victory at the state level for Republicans.

Part of the problem is that NC govt. is notoriously corrupt, so the party in power can stay in power by raising a lot of money from vested interests (and the Dems do dramatically outraise the Republicans in the state). The Republican Party has also split recently over control of the Assembly, and without that split their statewide support might be higher.

But the most important issue seems to be the need for Republicans to be conservative. We see too many compromises and rollovers on issues like targeted tax breaks for specific industries and companies (as opposed to a tax break for everyone) that allow voters to lump all politicians into the "bought off" category.

Finally, during the Q+A there were a number of comments about the biased press. I have repeatedly brought up the ethical lapses in the N&O when they fail to identify the party of those caught in misdeeds. The Civitas poll supports this claim as their respondents were evenly split on who they thought had the majority in the state Senate. The Dems do control the Senate, but when a terrible budget is proposed out of the Senate, the editorial writers can not even summon the courage to state the fact that the Senate is Dem-controlled.
Politics