A closer look at the smoking ban

North Carolina’s proposed comprehensive smoking ban looks to be in jeopardy. It is being rewritten and weakened because the stronger version didn’t look like it could pass. This has to be a victory for the smoking industry and other interest groups, because taking a closer look at our poll results would show that every constituency group was in favor of the ban.

North Carolina favored the smoking ban 67%-30%.

Women favored the ban 71-26.
Men favored the ban 62-36.

Democrats favored it 68-27.
Republican favored it 63-36.

Whites favored it 62-36.
Blacks favored it 84-9.

Only the 18-29 year-old age group did not favor the ban. At least 65% of every other age group favored it. 18-29 year-olds opposed it 43-57, but I caution to take those numbers with a grain of salt. There are so few 18-29 year-olds in the sample that the margin of error is extremely high.

So practically every group strongly favored the smoking ban. There are very few issues we poll that show this kind of unanimity.

Update: Some more chatter on the poll at The Progressive Pulse.