Carolina Journal’s Lindsay Marchello reports that a Civitas poll shows unaffiliated voters lean toward Dems, but support amendments.

Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the N.C. Republican Party, and Matt Hughes, second vice chair of the N.C. Democratic Party, shared their thoughts on the poll during a luncheon at the DoubleTree by Hilton.

Woodhouse said it’s a mistake to assume unaffiliated voters are moderates.

“We should not consider unaffiliated voters as moderates,” Woodhouse said. “We don’t consider them moderates for the most part, nor are they largely swing voters. Most unaffiliated voters are widely connected to one or the other political parties leanings.”

Woodhouse said civic participation is down and people are less likely to want to be labeled as a member of any party.

“They choose not to be affiliated with one of the parties, but this doesn’t make them any less partisan,” Woodhouse said.

Hughes agreed, adding that research shows unaffiliated voters react more positively or negatively to policy propositions depending on who proposed them.

“They are very hardcore in their political beliefs,” Hughes said.

With this poll, unaffiliated likely voters appear to lean more favorably toward the Democratic candidates in the generic ballots for state legislative, judicial, and congressional seats.

For the generic state legislative ballot, 34 percent of unaffiliated likely voters favored a Democratic candidate; 27 percent said they would vote for a Republican candidate. Nine percent said they would vote for a third-party candidate, and 29 percent were undecided.

When asked about constitutional amendments, the majority of unaffiliated votes were in support of all three.

Overall support for the voter ID amendment was 63 percent, while overall opposition amounted to 31 percent. For the right to hunt and fish amendment, 65 percent supported it, and 24 percent opposed it. The income tax cap amendment received 60 percent of overall support and 27 percent of overall opposition.