Poll: North Carolina Voters Disapprove Of Trump's Performance, Want Bipartisan Approach

A little more than a third of North Carolinians approve of the job President Donald Trump is doing in his first year on the job. That's according to an Elon University poll released Tuesday.

The survey, conducted at the end of September, shows a 34 percent approval rating for Trump, a contrast from Election Day when Trump won the Tar Heel State.

Elon Poll Director Jason Husser says the Republican president also has a 13 percent disapproval rating within his own party, which he says could be troublesome for the president if the trend continues.

“It's not terrible. It's not something he can't recover from,” Husser says. “But it's still a sign that there are a group of Republicans who maybe we could call ‘reluctant Trump voters' who are now at least willing to express their disapproval, at least to a stranger on the telephone.”

North Carolina voters also suggested they're looking for cooperation in government, with 75 percent saying Trump should work with Democrats to pass legislation.

The poll also took the statewide temperature on other key issues in the news, including the heated debate over whether Confederate monuments should be taken down.

But while the national debate remains quite split, a majority of North Carolina voters think the memorials should stay put.

All together, 59 percent of the state's residents support keeping the monuments in place, while less than a third want them taken down. That's a ratio of 2-to-1.

Where residents fall on the issue appears to depend largely on a few things: race, party, and geography.

For example, only a quarter of black voters want the memorials left alone, compared to 70 percent of whites who want the same. And rural North Carolinians overwhelmingly said they want the monuments to stay in place. The same goes for the vast majority of Republicans.

North Carolina is home to more than 100 Confederate monuments and memorials, including several here in the Triad.