It’s the game we’ve all been waiting for – and dreading – for many years: UNC and Duke are about to meet in the Final Four. Saturday night’s showdown may be the biggest game in college basketball history, the culmination of an iconic, intense rivalry.

So who will be rooting for whom? And how do Carolina fans and Duke fans really feel about each other, anyway?

97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck spoke this week with Tom Jensen, the director of Public Policy Polling (and a noted Tar Heel superfan).

Listen to their conversation.

Aaron Keck: Before we get to the numbers, your thoughts on Carolina-Duke? We’ve all thought this day would come for a long time, but I think we’re all still kind of processing the fact that it’s here.

Tom Jensen: Yeah, I’ve been to every UNC Final Four game as an adult, and I’m going to break that streak on Saturday. I’m not even going to watch the UNC-Duke game, because my anxiety levels cannot handle this. If the Tar Heels win, I’ll look forward to being at the championship game Monday night. And if Duke wins – I won’t even have to erase my memories of it, because I won’t have any.

Keck: I’m totally with you. I was having enough trouble watching the St. Peter’s game.

Jensen: This has, like, turned into an impossible nightmare. I mean, a delightful impossible nightmare, but an impossible nightmare nonetheless.

Keck: So you’ve done surveys on North Carolinians and where they stand on the Carolina-Duke rivalry. Who’s rooting for whom?

Jensen: Well, we talk so much about how divided North Carolinians are in this day and age, but there is one thing that Democrats and Republicans, White people and Black people, old people and young people, women and men all agree on – and that is preferring UNC over Duke.
We have polled this at least a dozen times over the years, and UNC always has a double-digit advantage in fan loyalty. The most recent (poll) that we did, 45 percent of North Carolinians said they root for UNC; only 23 percent said they root for Duke. And 32 percent say they don’t care at all – so “don’t care” is beating Duke, may I note.

Keck: How much overlap is there between people who like both Carolina and Duke?

Jensen: So that actually speaks to the most interesting poll that we’ve ever done about the UNC-Duke rivalry. This was a decade ago now, but I don’t think there’s any reason the numbers would’ve changed. We found that for the most part, UNC fans and Duke fans actually do not hate the other school, and that there’s a strong level of mutual respect. I think we’re in a little bit of a bubble here, right in the middle of it in Orange County and Durham County – but we’ve found there really just is not that much mutual hatred when you sort of look at it overall.

We asked Duke fans, when UNC is playing somebody other than (Duke), do you generally root for UNC or root against UNC? And Duke fans actually split evenly. 35 percent of them said they root for UNC when Duke’s not the opponent, and another 35 percent did say they root against UNC. We also asked Duke fans, would you describe your feelings towards UNC more as respect or hate? 49 percent said they respected UNC and only 16 percent said they hated them.

When you look at UNC fans, it’s the same sort of thing, (though) UNC fans were a little bit less generous towards Duke: 36 percent said they root against Duke and only 23 percent said they root for them. That does mean, you know, that if Duke wins on Saturday, about a quarter of Tar Heel fans are still going to root for them in the championship game.

And when we asked UNC fans that same question about whether they more respect Duke or hate Duke, 53 percent said they respected Duke, and 16 percent said they hated them – so, a lot more mutual respect than you would expect.

And just one other thing along those lines. It’s obviously generally thought of that UNC fans hate Mike Krzyzewski so much – but we actually found on this poll that 46 percent of UNC fans have a favorable opinion of Coach K, and only 27 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. So, definitely a lot more mutual respect in this rivalry than the general perception.

Keck: I think there’s one other thing that Carolina fans and Duke fans can agree on: how boring would it be if Kansas ended up winning this whole thing?

Jensen: I’m honestly very sort of worried that that’s what’s going to happen.

Keck: I want to see a UNC-Kansas final, just to see how Roy Williams deals with that.

Jensen: Yeah, I don’t think Roy’s going to be wearing any stickers this week.

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