North Carolina’s perplexing pessimistic mood

Our state is doing well, but voters don’t feel it.

There’s a detailed new poll making the rounds of N.C. politics world this week from liberal activist group Change Research. The toplines have been widely reported on, so I won’t repeat them here.

A.P. Dillon has a good breakdown on why you should take all that with a grain of salt. I highly recommend you give it a read.

I’ll point out one more thing about the poll that makes me shake my head, too. The pollsters claim that 27% of the electorate are “movable,” meaning they could potentially vote for either party. Just on a gut level, I find that preposterously high. Change Research defines “movable” as being generally unhappy with the two parties and unsure who they’re voting for in the next election. That might be a decent measure of lower-propensity voters, but it’s a far cry from being “movable.”

However, Change Research’s new poll also picks up on an undercurrent that I do think is real. It’s that North Carolina voters across the board — Republicans, Democrats, unaffiliated, men, wom…