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Poll finds NC voters understand relationships between super PACs, campaign finance

North Carolina is in the midst of a heated election cycle, and voters in the state are keenly aware of the increasingly-intertwined roles of super PACs and campaign finance.

Researchers from UNC and High Point University found that North Carolina voters understand this relationship more than the average American voter – while about 40 percent of Americans can define a Super PAC, about 51 percent of North Carolina voters can, according to the poll.

And awareness is even higher at UNC, said Daniel Riffe, a UNC journalism professor, and one of the three researchers responsible for designing and administering the survey.

“There is probably even greater awareness in the UNC community, because people are more savvy about politics, and pay more attention to it,” he said.

North Carolina's U.S. Senate race, where eight Republican candidates battle to unseat Sen. Kay Hagan, has seen an influx of outside money. The primary is on May 6.

The survey results, compiled from about 600 responses, asked participants to denote their level of familiarity with Super PACs and whether they agreed with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow super PACs to accept unlimited political donations.

Riffe said many North Carolina voters question the ethical grounds for super PACs and fear these groups might not base their claims on facts, since they are exempt from candidates’ anti-slander laws.

“These super PACs aren’t bound by the same types of restrictions on truth and so they can use innuendo,” he said. “They can use more things that are so negative that you or I wouldn’t say them to one another – or to a dog – but they can get away with it.”

Martin Kifer, director of the Survey Research Center at HPU, said respondents generally thought Republican candidates benefited more from super PACs than Democrats.

“We asked them a series of questions about what a super PAC was, and we gave them several different ideas of what they could be – about half the people got it right,” Kifer said.

Riffe said the lack of objectivity of super PACs can lead to a loss of credibility for popular perception of politics.

“What that ultimately does is not only makes people more skeptical about politics, but more withdrawn from the process, (and) generally makes us begin to wonder whether any of those folks can tell the truth at all,” Riffe said. 

“It makes us critical viewers, but it also makes us critical of everything we hear."

Sadie Leder, associate director of HPU's Survey Research Center, said the survey was the second survey that was a collaborative effort between HPU and UNC.

state@dailytarheel.com

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