Raleigh, N.C. – Most North Carolina voters, 85 percent, think state House and Senate leaders should be limited in the number of terms they serve.
All legislators currently serve two-year terms. Fifty-one percent of voters think legislators should be limited to serving four years or less in a leadership position. Seventy-one percent said they should be limited to six years or less. Another 14 percent said four terms should be the limit. Nine percent of voters do not believe there should be a limit on how long a legislator can be in charge of the state House or Senate.
Legislative term limits appear to have broad and continuing support as a March 2011 Civitas poll found 76 percent of voters back a constitutional amendment limiting the term limits for state House and Senate leaders.
“As well as backing term limits overall, voters are very strongly in support of limiting terms for legislative leadership,” said Civitas Institute President Francis De Luca.
The Civitas Poll is the only regular live-caller poll of critical issues facing North Carolina. For more information on Civitas polling see http://www.nccivitas.org/category/poll/.
Full Text of Question:
“There is a proposal to limit the terms that any one legislator can serve as the leader of the state House or state Senate. All legislators serve two-year terms. How many total two year terms would you say is the most that any one legislator should be in charge of the state House or state Senate?”
One two-year term (or a total of 2 years) – 13%
Two two-year terms (or a total of 4 years) – 38%
Three two-year terms (or a total of 6 years) – 20%
Four two-year terms (or a total of 8 years) – 14%
Don’t believe there should be a limit – 9%
Don’t Know/Refused – 5%
For the full results and crosstabs, click here.
This poll of 600 likely 2012 general election voters in North Carolina was conducted September 22-25, 2011 by National Research, Inc. of Holmdel, NJ. All respondents were part of a fully representative sample of likely 2012 general election voters in North Carolina. For purposes of this study, voters interviewed had to have voted in at least one of the past three general elections (2006, 2008, 2010) or be newly registered to vote since November 2, 2010.
The confidence interval associated with a sample of this size is such that: 95 percent of the time, results from 600 interviews (registered voters) will be within +-4% of the “True Values.” True Values refer to the results obtained if it were possible to interview every person in North Carolina who had voted in at least one of the past three general elections or is newly registered since November 2, 2010.
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