News-Record.com

The latest Elon University Poll is out. Click here for the raw data.

This one looks like it tackled many of the issues that we scruffy media types were reporting on during the legislative session. Some quick-hit impressions:

• * When asked in a vacuum whether they would support a real estate transfer tax being put in place in their county, respondents opposed or strongly opposed the idea to the tune of 70 percent.

  But when the question was modified to ask how they might feel if the revenue was dedicated for education, opposition dwindles and there are more support/strongly support responses than oppose/strongly oppose.

  This is a fairly classic effect in polling. Nobody likes taxes and if you poll them without context, nobody will say they randomly want to raise them. But if you ask whether local governments should raise taxes for a specific purpose, that tends to turn people around.

  I have a feeling that we've just seen a preview of this spring's referenda fights if larger counties decided to put the transfer tax on the ballot.

• * Support for statewide and local laws that curb smoking remains strong, despite many respondents saying they'd wish business owners would take the reigns on the issue rather than government.

  You'll recall an effort to ban smoking in all public places failed in the General Assembly this year. However, a lot of smaller bites at the apple (banning smoking in nursing homes and allowing for bans on college campuses for example) passed.

  These poll results would seem to suggest, as did similar polls taken in the spring, that tar heels by and large would be fine with the General Assembly enacting a smoking ban. However, while tobacco may no longer be king here, there are still a few powerful knights of the realm that defend the industry.

• * It was no surprise that 68.4 percent of respondents said immigration was a "very important" issue in North Carolina. Anyone who hit the campaign trail with any sort of candidate in 2006 heard about it. I would caution that in other surveys when folks are asked to rank immigration against other issues like the economy or the war in Iraq it did not fare as well.

  I don't know whether I should be surprised by them, but the immigration numbers that jumped out at me on this poll were when people were asked if "immigration of Hispanics or Latinos to NC in recent years has been [bad or good] for NC..."

  More than half of those responding said "bad," versus only 21 percent "good."

  That kind of response is why the GOP in particular tried to use immigration as wedge issue in 2006. That plan back-fired here and elsewhere, in large part because Republicans weren't even in the same book much less the same page with each other when it came to fixing immigration problems.

  However, with the issue polling this viscerally, I'd be surprised not to see it raised in the 2008 campaigns, particularly the statewide races for governor and U.S. Senate.

• * When asked about Stem Cells, something over half of respondents said they favored stem cell research and public funding for stem cell research. On both questions, pollsters got about 10 percent "don't knows," which tells me there are quite a few people who haven't made up their mind on the topic. Die-hard opposition to stem cell research ran about 30 percent in the poll, which I think is what I'd expect given voter registration and religious-affiliation trends in this state.