A new poll looks at how presidential candidates are perceived both across the country and across the state. As expected, the front-runners garnered the most praise. But there were some key differences between the state and national results.
According to an Elon Poll, Mike Huckabee had the highest number of positive comments among North Carolina Republican voters surveyed, just ahead of Ben Carson and Jeb Bush. That was far better than Huckabee fared in the poll's national results, where he finished fourth. Jason Husser, assistant director of the poll, says the political make-up of the state may explain the difference.
"North Carolina has a strong evangelical base and there's likely more Fox News viewers in North Carolina than other parts of the country and he was a Fox News commentator for a long time," Husser says. "But a lot of it is North Carolina is more conservative than the country as a whole despite being a swing state."
North Carolinians described Huckabee with words like "Christian," "conservative," religious" and "honest."
Nationally, Jeb Bush had the highest number of positive attributes.
Among Democrats, Husser says Hillary Clinton led the way, with more than half of respondents in both the U.S. and North Carolina describing her in positive terms.
"Nobody had as high of positive numbers," he says. "For instance, Mike Huckabee in North Carolina had 25 percent of responses were positive. Hillary Clinton's were twice that."
Husser says the poll may not be a good predictor of how people will ultimately vote. But he says it does give some insights as to how voters feel about candidates and shows which candidates have work to do if they are going to be competitive.
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