Here’s how NC voters view the 12-week abortion law, according to a new poll

A new poll out Wednesday offers one of the first glimpses into how North Carolinians feel about the state’s new abortion ban ahead of its July 1 implementation.

The national debate around abortion — ushered in mainly through the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade — came to North Carolina last month as the Republican-controlled legislature passed a 12-week abortion ban. The bill was originally vetoed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, but the General Assembly’s Republican supermajority overrode the veto.

The law goes into effect in two-and-a-half weeks, leaving many to question how its implementation will impact North Carolinians ahead of a contentious election season.

Several polls across North Carolina have sought to answer this question, such as recent findings from Meredith College and High Point University. In the Meredith Poll in February, more than a third of respondents wanted to restrict abortion access beyond what was in place at the time, largely Republicans. The High Point University poll in June asked respondents to rate how important certain issues were for the next governor to address. Almost 75% of respondents said abortion was very or somewhat important.

Adding to the conversation on North Carolinian’s abortion attitudes, a new poll from Elon University gauged North Carolina voters’ support of or opposition to the new ban.

The poll also included a wide range of questions for voters to weigh in on sports betting and candidates in the 2024 elections.

Former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence are among the top contenders to take on President Joe Biden. In the race for governor, Republicans Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, State Treasurer Dale Folwell and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein are all running.

The News & Observer spoke with Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll, about the poll’s findings. The poll includes the responses of 1,268 respondents, who were all registered voters. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

North Carolinians’ view on abortion ban

Q: What are the overall trends you’ve noticed with the topic of abortion in North Carolina?

Husser: We found 45% opposing — either strongly or somewhat — and 36% supporting strongly or somewhat. So that’s about 10% more people in opposition to the change than support … so there was not overwhelming support for this abortion change, but, in fact, there were more people opposed to it than supporting it.

But I’m not sure opposition is so high that it becomes “the” issue, now that it’s already passed. So for a candidate to primarily campaign on that, they need to present an argument that by electing them to office … they could undo this change. That seems pretty unrealistic that Democrats would get both majorities in both chambers as well as the governor’s mansion and be able to undo it.

Q: So for Republicans, would you say that campaigning on abortion is something that would help or hurt them?

Husser: Depends on the district at the General Assembly level. Some districts are conservative enough that the candidate should campaign on it, even though statewide it may not have support, their district may be drawn in such a way that there’s overwhelming support for additional restrictions. Statewide though, is where it’s harder, particularly in North Carolina. Right now, I’d say we’re red-tinted purple, but migration to the state likely means that we’re going to become more solidly purple as time goes on.

Trump, Robinson lead in 2024 Republican primary

Q: Who is leading the pack for the Republican presidential nomination?

Husser: In the Republican campaign for president, Trump had the highest levels of favorability among Republican voters, followed by DeSantis … (Trump) still has deep support within the Republican Party within North Carolina. Of course, he also has plenty of opposition, both within the party but statewide with Democrats and unaffiliated voters included. His numbers were 45% favorable, 52% unfavorable. However, among Republicans he was 80% favorable.

In some ways, Pence looks like a close third to DeSantis … looking at Republican voters only is a decent way to look at the future Super Tuesday election. So Pence has 55% favorable, but 36% unfavorable, and not that many unfamiliar with him. DeSantis, on the other hand, has 63% favorable and 21% unfavorable, so he’s got a 42 point net positive. Pence only has a 19 point net positive.

Q: A lot of the news around Trump this week is about his indictment. Looking at this polling data, do you anticipate the indictment having any impact?

Husser: We’ve seen over and over again, pretty serious allegations being leveled against President Trump and him being able to still retain support, whether that’s early on in the 2016 campaign with the “Access Hollywood” tapes or this more recent indictment. It does seem from national polls that he’s able to maintain his numbers so far.

However, I think that has a possibility to change if there are criminal charges that look like they may stick and that he could potentially be convicted of a crime that would have a significant prison sentence. That would change things. But I think there’s still many supporters that will see these charges as politically motivated and stick with him regardless.

Q: What have you noticed when it comes to North Carolina’s gubernatorial candidates?

Husser: Mark Robinson had the highest levels of familiarity and highest levels of favorability within the Republican Party. So that sort of suggests that Robinson is the front-runner of the gubernatorial race. We have statewide Robinson not favorable at 18%, among Republicans it’s only 4% not favorable. So most of Robinson’s unfavorable numbers are coming from Democrats. Overall, Robinson is a figure that engenders deep feelings, whether that’s positive feelings or negative feelings.

Folwell and Walker both have significant name recognition issues right now, and they don’t have a tremendous amount of time to close that name recognition gap … Robinson is in a more prominent position. As a sitting lieutenant governor, lieutenant governors generally command more attention than a state treasurer of a former member of Congress.

…Stein’s numbers weren’t as great as I thought they’d be. I thought he would have higher levels of name recognition. But that may be because I follow politics all the time.

High support for sports betting in NC

Q: Could you outline some of the general trends you saw with questions related to sports betting?

Husser: We found that a pretty solid majority of North Carolina voters support sports betting legalization, almost a two to one ratio: 66% to 34%. I included different concerns that had been raised in prior discussions around sports betting. One was whether it would create a financial burden for poor people, whether it would reduce illegal bookmaking and would it generate useful tax revenues and would it be endorsing something that’s morally wrong. Generally, I found that those considerations mapped on with people’s overall support.

Q: Are there any other issues you’ve seen through polling that have comparable support to sports betting?

Husser: We found similar high levels of support for medical marijuana, which is another issue that has come up in the General Assembly, but it’s never quite made it through.