The toll on Governor Pat's approval numbers?

It's getting harder to keep track of all the reasons North Carolinians are displeased with Pat McCrory. Right now, it's Duke Energy, his former employer, and the governor's waffling on leaking coal ash ponds. There's also teacher pay and the Medicaid expansion rejection and cutting unemployment benefits and a broken abortion promise and delivering cookies and "thanks for nothing" and, of course, the comedy that is the Department of Health and Human Services.

So how bad are the polling numbers looking right now for Gov. McCrisis? Not that bad, really. An American Insights survey of 611 registered N.C. voters showed McCrory enjoying a slightly positive approval rating - 43 percent who approve of the job he's doing to 40 percent who don't. (An Elon poll released this week had McCrory's approval at 36 percent, with 43 percent disapproving, but even that is an almost three percent improvement for the governor since November.)


There's some softness in the American Insights numbers for McCrory. More people strongly disapprove of the governor (27 percent) than strongly approve (17 percent), and his net approval with independents is at negative 2, according to American Insights. He's also under water with the important middle age demographics - the 35-49 age group disapproves of the governor by four points; the 50-64 age group feels the same by six points. Those are two of your reliable voting groups.

But McCrory is doing surprisingly well with women, who are evenly divided at 41 percent, and of course he is strong among Republicans, men, and older folks (65+). And his overall numbers are even more impressive considering that anti-incumbent sentiment (albeit for members of Congress) is at an all-time high in the U.S., according to a Washington Post poll today.

How does that all add up? Here's one measure: McCrory leads N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper by six percentage points, 44-38, in the race for governor in 2016.

It's a very early poll, of course. It's also a reminder of party entrenchment - there's just not a lot of movement with voters who identify with either party. (McCrory gets 79 percent of the Republican vote against Cooper.)

But your bigger takeaway of this poll and others: McCrory is surviving a rocky first year of being tugged between the extreme conservatives in the General Assembly and the angry progressives who feel betrayed that the governor isn't the moderate he said he was.

The governor will surely spend 2014 moving back toward the center on issues such as teacher pay, although it's difficult to imagine N.C. voters being fooled again into thinking he's a moderate. But as even this early poll shows - given his ever-solid Republican numbers, he only needs some independents to give him a second chance.

Peter St. Onge