A Softening, But Not a Flip: North Carolina's Partisan Identification Shifted Late in 2025

By Michael Bitzer

With 2025 concluded and the start of what will be an intense 2026, I was reviewing the past year’s Catawba College-YouGov surveys of North Carolinians (1) to see what interesting patterns or trends occurred over the year.

One thing that stood out to me (because of its potential implications for electoral volatility in a presidential-to-midterm transition year) was a fairly consistent pattern of the state’s partisan identification—that is, until the final survey of 2025.

As part of a standard set of questions asked in each Catawba-YouGov poll, respondents can initally say what their partisan identification is: Democrat, Republican, Independent, other, or not sure. Another question asks for the respondents’ ‘strength’ of their initial partisan identification, meaning for partisans ‘are you strong or not very strong’ in your identity, while among those who initially say they are ‘Independent,’ do they lean to one party or the other, or do they consider themselves a ‘pure’ independent.

Starting with the first Catawba-YouGov Survey in August 2024, the partisan self-identifications of the surveys showed a pretty consistent pattern over the past year, until the last survey.

Figure 1: Catawba-YouGov 2024-2025 Surveys with initial partisan identifications among North Carolina Respondents.

The Supreme Court is Wildly Out of Touch with North Carolinians

By Whitney Ross Manzo

Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States began issuing its most controversial decisions of the 2021-2022 term. They do this every year around the end of June into early July, which is traditionally their 'end of the term' before going into their “vacation” until the 2022-2023 term starts on the first Monday in October. (During this break, justices do some work of reviewing petitions and preparing for the next term. However, they are not nearly as active as during the term, such as hearing oral arguments and releasing opinions, so that they can disappear to Austria, if they like.)

For people who study and teach on the Court, like Michael Bitzer and I do, words cannot adequately express how unprecedented and radical last week’s decisions were. We are used to teaching students about how the Court relies on stare decisis (literally “to stand by things decided”) in order to promote stability and consistency in law. We explain how justices must use sound legal reasoning in order for their decisions to be respected and upheld by the other branches of government, and ultimately by the public at large.

Last week’s decisions took a giant wrecking ball to basically every lecture I have on the Supreme Court, because they illuminate how none of these things are actually true. Justices don't rely on stare decisis unless it suits them. Justices don't have to use sound legal reasoning because, honestly, who’s going to stop them? They are the final say on the Constitution, after all.

But should they be?