HIGH POINT, N.C., Feb. 13, 2018 – A High Point University Poll finds that North Carolinians give President Donald Trump a job approval rating of 38 percent and Gov. Roy Cooper an approval rating of 46 percent. Meanwhile, a majority continue to say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Approximately half (50 percent) of North Carolina residents say they disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president, and the remaining 12 percent do not offer an opinion.

About one in four (26 percent) of these same North Carolina residents say they disapprove of Gov. Roy Cooper’s job performance, while 28 percent refuse to offer an opinion either way.

Just over half (57 percent) of North Carolinians say the country is on the wrong track compared to the 61 percent who said the same thing to the HPU Poll in February 2017. The most recent HPU Poll found that about a third (32 percent) of respondents thought the country was headed in the right direction compared to 27 percent who felt the same in February 2017.

In other findings, only 15 percent of North Carolinians approve of how the U.S. Congress is doing its job. This result is about 8 percentage points lower than when the HPU Poll last asked a sample of all North Carolina adults for a rating of Congress in February 2017.

The North Carolina General Assembly had a job approval rating of 31 percent, with 36 percent disapproving and about one third (34 percent) refusing to offer a view either way.

“We have been tracking the public’s reactions to President Trump and Governor Cooper during their first year in office,” says Brian McDonald, associate director of the HPU Poll and adjunct instructor. “The HPU Poll continues to show no significant change in how North Carolinians feel about our elected officials.”

All adults – Country Direction (February 2018)

Do you think things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track?

Right direction – 32 percent

Wrong track – 57 percent

Don’t know/refused – 11 percent

(All adult (North Carolina resident) sample surveyed Feb. 5-11, 2018, n = 439 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.7 percent)

All adults – Presidential Job Approval (February 2018)

Do you approve or disapprove of the way that Donald Trump is handling his job as president?

Approve – 38 percent

Disapprove – 50 percent

Don’t know/refuse – 12 percent

(All adult (North Carolina resident) sample surveyed Feb. 5-11, 2018, n = 439 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.7 percent)

All adults – Governor Job Approval (February 2018)

Do you approve or disapprove of the way that Roy Cooper is handling his job as governor?

Approve – 46 percent

Disapprove – 26 percent

Don’t know/refuse – 28 percent

(All adult (North Carolina resident) sample surveyed Feb. 5-11, 2018, n = 439 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.7 percent)

All adults – Congressional Job Approval (February 2018)

Do you approve or disapprove of the way that the U.S. Congress is handling its job?

Approve – 15 percent

Disapprove – 72 percent

Don’t know/refused – 13 percent

(All adult (North Carolina resident) sample surveyed Feb. 5-11, 2018, n = 439 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.7 percent)

All adults – N.C. General Assembly Job Approval (February 2018)

Do you approve or disapprove of the way that the North Carolina General Assembly is handling its job?

Approve – 31 percent

Disapprove – 36 percent

Don’t know/refused – 34 percent

(All adult (North Carolina resident) sample surveyed Feb. 5-11, 2018, n = 439 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.7 percent)

The most recent HPU Poll was fielded by live interviewers at the High Point University Survey Research Center calling on Feb. 5-11, 2018. The responses from a sample of all North Carolina counties came from 439 adults with landline or cellular telephones. The registered voter subsample relied on responses from the participants about their own registration status and yielded a total of 364 respondents. The Survey Research Center contracted with Survey Sampling International to acquire this sample. The survey has an estimated margin of sampling error of approximately 4.7 percentage points for all adult respondents and an approximate margin of sampling error of 5.1 percent for the self-described registered voters. The data is weighted toward population estimates for cellular and landline telephone use, age, gender, race, and education level based on U.S. Census numbers for North Carolina. In addition to sampling error, factors such as question wording and other methodological choices in conducting survey research can introduce additional error into the findings of opinion polls. Details from this survey are available at http://www.highpoint.edu/src/files/2018/02/56memoA.pdf.

Further results and methodological details from the most recent survey and past studies can be found at the Survey Research Center website at http://www.highpoint.edu/src/. The materials online include past press releases as well as memos summarizing the findings (including approval ratings) for each poll since 2010.

The HPU Poll reports methodological details in accordance with the standards set out by AAPOR’s Transparency Initiative, and the HPU Survey Research Center is a Charter Member of the Initiative. For more information, see

http://transparency.aapor.org/index.php/transparency.

You can follow the HPU Poll on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HPUSurveyCenter.

Dr. Martin Kifer, chair and associate professor of political science, serves as the director of the HPU Poll, and Brian McDonald serves as the associate director of the HPU Poll.