Carolina, Duke Fans Agree: Repeal HB2

Carolina and Duke are rivals on the court this week, but there’s one thing they agree on:

HB2 ought to be repealed.

Leaders at both schools have spoken out against the bill; both Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski denounced it in recent days (they’ve done so in the past as well); and a recent survey from Public Policy Polling shows Carolina fans and Duke fans are both about equally united in opposition to HB2.

“The level of agreement between Duke and UNC fans, when it comes to HB2, is pretty amazing,” says PPP director Tom Jensen. A recent PPP survey shows that 55 percent of both fan bases are opposed to the bill. (34 percent of UNC fans and 30 percent of Duke fans say they want to keep it in place.) North Carolinians as a whole feel about the same: 50 percent oppose HB2, while 32 percent support it.

Opposition to the bill is stronger among urban voters: not only are they more likely to lean Democratic, they’re also the ones most directly affected by the anti-HB2 boycott. But Jensen says there’s no part of North Carolina where support for the bill is particularly strong: even in rural counties, he says, voters are about evenly split (40-40, with 20 percent unsure).

“I can’t think of anywhere, off the top of my head, where we’ve found that people really like it,” Jensen says.

The bill is in the news again because of reports that the NCAA may refuse to schedule championship events in North Carolina for the next five years if HB2 isn’t repealed soon. (That would significantly hurt the state’s economy, and the economic effect has swayed public opinion on the issue – but Jensen says he wouldn’t expect public opinion to change much if the NCAA did make such a decision.)

Tom Jensen spoke Thursday with WCHL’s Aaron Keck.

 

On the Carolina/Duke rivalry itself, PPP’s latest survey finds that Carolina’s got the bigger fan base: 33 percent of North Carolinians say they’re Tar Heel fans, compared with 19 percent for Duke (and 16 percent for NC State). It’s the one issue on which Democrats and Republicans are actually in agreement: Jensen says there are more Carolina fans than Duke fans on both sides of the aisle.