The anti-abortion bill pushed through the North Carolina state House is not popular with voters, to say the least. Public Policy Polling asked voters about the bill, which was
attached to a motorcycle safety bill and brought to a vote without warning, and
found that:
Only 34% of voters support the proposal to 47% who are opposed. They're even more unhappy with the process- 80% think it's inappropriate to combine abortion legislation with bills about motorcycle safety or Sharia Law.
What's more, voter unhappiness with the anti-abortion bill and the sneaky process by which it was brought to a vote seems to be hurting the state's Republican governor, Pat McCrory, who has said he would sign it. He has a negative approval rating for the first time, down a net 15 points from June. Abortion isn't the only thing North Carolina voters have to be angry with their Republican government about, either,
55% of voters are unhappy with the legislation that resulted in 70,000 North Carolinians losing their unemployment benefits earlier this month to only 29% who are supportive of it. There's strong opposition to this development by both independents (32/55) and Democrats (10/78).
Who could have predicted that voters would be annoyed with a government that went after both women's health care and unemployed people? In fact, perhaps more striking than the General Assembly's 20 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval is the 46 percent of North Carolina voters who say that the General Assembly is causing the state national embarrassment. That doesn't help North Carolina's jobless, though, and it's unlikely to help women, with the state Senate and Gov. McCrory following through in passing the state House's bill limiting access to abortion. Because once today's Republicans are in office, they are hell-bent on passing their extremist agenda, all of it, regardless of whether that's what they campaigned on or what their constituents want.