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Poll of North Carolinians finds partisan divide over certain Constitutional protections

The U.S. Constitution at the National Archives
Mark Schiefelbein
/
AP
The U.S. Constitution is displayed at the National Archives in Washington, as the Archives unveiled a display for the first time of the entire Constitution and all 27 amendments, as part of celebrations for the upcoming 250th anniversary of founding of the United States.

The survey from Catawba College of 1,000 people found that more than 90 percent rated the protections of life, liberty and property to be extremely or very important.

But there were partisan differences among views on individual amendments.

Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba, says the gaps show that the country has deep divisions that need to be addressed.

“I think where we need some work is people understanding what these basic principles are, perhaps some of the history behind them, and to try and find some kind of bridge over some of these more controversial issues,” he says.

On the Second Amendment, about 90 percent of Republicans said it's important, while only about half of Democrats thought so.

And there was a chasm between Democrats and Republicans over freedom of the press, where Democrats’ support was 34 points higher than that of GOP respondents.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.