Poll exposes potential Achilles’ Heel for the political right

There are more than a few modern American progressives who wish that the leaders on their side of the great national political divide possessed the same commitment to hardball, take-no-prisoners politics as their conservative adversaries.

“Boy, we sure hate what they’re doing to our country,” goes the thinking that one often hears expressed, “but we wish that our side could stop pussyfooting around and learn a thing or two from the right about doing what it takes to win!”

In some ways at least, it’s an understandable sentiment. Over the last several years, progressives have watched in horror as a determined minority movement has seized control of and radicalized the nation’s laws and governmental institutions in unprecedented ways. In numerous areas – public and higher education, personal bodily autonomy, the role and rights of corporations and workers, racial and gender equality, the distribution of the nation’s wealth, separation of church and state, gun ownership, combating the climate crisis, and even America’s role in the world – the right has succeeded in overturning decades of slow but mostly steady progress and imposing a series of dramatic policy 180’s.

What’s more, to add to the frustration, the change in no way reflects any kind of significant shift in public opinion or popular values.

Rather, like so many past authoritarian movements that seized upon narrow electoral victories and, either by hook or crook, converted them into massive power shifts and policy sea changes, modern American conservatives have used passion, large doses of cynical pragmatism and an unapologetic willingness to shatter legal and societal norms to secure their objectives.

Think about it – the proof of this reality is in the numbers. Donald Trump lost the popular vote in two of the last three national elections and won less than 50% of the vote in his 2024 victory. Congress has been divided by the narrowest of margins for years. In North Carolina, registered Democrats still slightly outnumber registered Republicans and as multiple razor-thin Supreme Court races demonstrate, it remains a deeply “purple” state.

If ever there was a time in which public attitudes would seem to demand divided, middle ground government, this is it.

Instead, of course, we have the opposite. Rather than generally staying the course or pursuing incremental change, Republicans in Washington, DC and several states like North Carolina have repeatedly swung for the fences and moved with all the speed they can muster to roll back past progressive wins and lock in unpopular, ultra-right policies – like slashing taxes on the rich, disempowering workers, undermining reproductive freedom, abandoning efforts to combat climate change and militarizing law enforcement.

Will they succeed in effecting a lasting overhaul of American society?

Maybe.

While it’s true that many, if not most, hard right and authoritarian regimes in modern times have eventually foundered, Trump and company have taken some steps – perhaps most notably in the courts – that will make rooting out some of their changes quite difficult.

That said, a recent public opinion poll in North Carolina helps shine a light on what could be an important Achilles’ Heel.

The issue is gerrymandering – the drawing of political maps to rig elections for partisan purposes.

As has been well-publicized, Republicans have been moving aggressively at Trump’s specific direction of late to further gerrymander already rigged electoral maps in a handful of states they already control in hopes of retaining their narrow control of the U.S. House in the 2026 elections. This includes North Carolina, where it appears Republican legislative leaders are likely to pass legislation later this month that would eliminate chances for Democrats to prevail in the First Congressional District – a region in the state’s east that takes in most of the so-called “Black Belt,” currently represented by Democrat Don Davis.

If this effort succeeds – and some reports indicate that Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger has pledged to do the deed in exchange for a Trump endorsement in his 2026 GOP primary, although Berger has denied this — the state’s already rigged U.S. House map would shift from 10-4 Republican to 11-3.

As a new poll conducted by a GOP polling firm and released by the good government nonprofit Common Cause demonstrates convincingly, however, such a move will be enormously unpopular. The poll found that 84% of voters – including 78% of unaffiliated voters and 65% of Republicans – said gerrymandering maps for partisan advantage is “never acceptable.” Two-thirds of GOP leaders said the practice should be illegal and nearly half conceded that the current already rigged maps were likely unfairly drawn.

Could this remarkable consensus in public opinion ultimately help give rise to a shift in attitudes and behavior among enough voters (and help anger enough progressives) to help swing upcoming elections against Trump and set the nation on a different path? In such closely divided times, it certainly seems possible.

Whatever the case, the blatant and desperate nature of the scheme provides a strong indication that, like many other authoritarian fear-dependent regimes down through human history, the Trump movement is grappling with some significant fears of its own.