NC’s preferences from BBQ to basketball

Public Policy Polling released its 2017 North Carolina Culture Poll Tuesday, polling North Carolinians and comparing favorability among North Carolina staples such a doughnuts, barbeque, basketball and music. 

Public Policy Polling (PPP) is a Raleigh-based agency started in 2001 to “address inefficiencies in public policy surveys,” according to its website. 

Food:

When it comes to doughnuts, North Carolinians have definitely picked a side, the Krispy Kreme side. The Winston-Salem-based company is preferred 64/23 percent over the Massachusetts-based Dunkin’ Donuts. Native North Carolinians prefer Krispy Kreme 78/13 while those who moved to the state prefer it by a narrower 46/36. 

Regarding the barbeque debate, eastern-style wins out over western-style 42/31. While the polling agency mostly strays away from giving political affiliation in their culture poll, PPP has concluded that Democrats and Republicans in the state agree with each other on barbeque. Republicans prefer eastern-style 40/33 and Democrats prefer eastern-style 39/34. 

Sports: 

Thirty-three percent of college basketball fans in North Carolina identify as UNC-Chapel Hill fans, the most of any college basketball affiliation in the state. Nineteen percent identify as Duke fans, 16 percent for NC State and 5 percent for Wake Forest. Twenty-seven percent of those polled claim to have no team preference. As far as coach favorability among fans, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski leads the pack with an 84 percent approval rating. UNC-Chapel Hill’s Roy Williams isn’t far behind with 81 percent. Wake Forest’s Danny Manning comes in third with 62 percent and NC State’s Mark Gottfried finishes with a 45 percent approval rating among fans polled. 

The Carolina Panthers remain the preferred NFL team in the state, although their fan affiliation has dropped considerably after a relatively disappointing season. Forty-four percent of those polled claim to be Panthers fans, which has dropped considerably from last year’s 58 percent. No other NFL team has double-digit affiliation, but the second most favorable team in NC is the Dallas Cowboys, with an 8 percent fan base in the state. 

Cities:

PPP concluded that the most favorable city in North Carolina is Wilmington, with a 69 percent favorability. Raleigh comes in second with 62 percent and Asheville is right behind with 61 percent. Charlotte, the largest city in the state, doesn’t appear on the list until spot eight, with a 55 percent favorability rating. This is down from PPP’s last North Carolina city poll in 2012, when Charlotte had a 67 percent favorability rating. PPP believes this is due to movement among Republicans. In 2012, Charlotte was at +51 with Democrats (66/15), and now it’s at +52 (68/16). But with Republicans, in the wake of the HB2 debate, Charlotte’s dropped from +30 (51/21) all the way down to break even at 38/38. 

Of the 12 cities polled, Fayetteville is lowest on the list, coming in with 34 percent of those polled seeing the city as favorable and 27 percent seeing it as unfavorable. 

Full rankings for cities as well as other cultural aspects can be found here.