Â鶹ĘÓƵ Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics Devon Hawkins provided insight for an Oct. 30 examining a proposed constitutional amendment that would cap North Carolina’s state income tax rate at 3.5%.

The report explores the potential financial implications of the amendment, which voters will decide on Nov. 3. While the state’s current income tax rate is 3.99% and is scheduled to decrease to 3.49% in 2027, the amendment would prevent future lawmakers from raising the rate above 3.5%.

“Essentially, we’re not going to feel much of anything with this decrease in cap,” said Hawkins.

Hawkins explained that lower income tax rates could provide modest increases in take-home pay for residents, but could also reduce revenue available for public services.

“Every action has a reaction,” Hawkins said. “In this case, if we’re lowering tax rates, we’re eliminating tax revenue. There is no way around the fact that with less money, less can be done.”

Pate McMichael, director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition and instructor of journalism at Â鶹ĘÓƵ, joined WFAE’s Charlotte Talks with Mike Collins for a discussion about the growing influence of artificial intelligence on political campaigns and elections.

The Oct. 27 episode, “Artificial Intelligence in Elections,” examined concerns surrounding AI-generated campaign advertisements, deepfakes and the potential for misleading content to influence voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“These ads are supposed to be educational in nature; that’s the whole reason why the Supreme Court has unleashed this amount of money into our elections, the idea we need more information,” said McMcMichael. “These ads often leave you scratching your head thinking, ‘What? Can that be true?’ Is this accurate?’ And so I think more than ever people would like to see more transparency around these ads.”

The discussion also explored efforts to regulate AI in political advertising. While 31 states have enacted some form of regulation governing AI in political campaigns, North Carolina has yet to adopt similar legislation despite multiple attempts by state lawmakers. Part of those regulations includes disclosing if an ad features AI.

“If it’s more transparency, why not require it?,” said McMichael. “We’re seeing that in Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Texas; a lot of states require those types of disclosures; they’re written differently. But essentially, why not give us a little more insight into how the ad was made and also who funded (it) … because we really don’t have strong transparency around who’s funding any online or social media … ads either.”

McMichael joined Michael Bitzer, professor of politics and history at Catawba College, and Scott Brennan, director of New York University’s Center on Technology Policy, for the conversation about emerging technology, political communication and election integrity.

As generative sweeps across industries, some workers using it are reporting increases in . But inside government, where those benefits could translate into better public services, many employees are still unsure how the technology applies to their jobs, how to use it, or whether they are allowed to.

Â鶹ĘÓƵ Assistant Professor of Journalism Israel Balderas provided political analysis for an Oct. 20 FOX8 report examining President Donald Trump’s decision not to enforce new sanctions against Russia despite bipartisan congressional support for the legislation.

The report, part of Bob Buckley’s Buckley Report, explores the political implications of Trump’s decision to suspend sanctions intended to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.

“So, the idea of using the power that Congress gave them to reverse on those sanctions certainly politically doesn’t make sense,” Balderas said. “But again, strategically, this is giving more power to Vladimir Putin than many legislative leaders are comfortable with.”

Balderas, a First Amendment attorney and former television journalist, also explained that Congress included a provision in the legislation allowing the president to suspend the sanctions.

“So, Congress gave him the power and so he is acting under the authority that Congress gave him,” Balderas said.

Â鶹ĘÓƵ professor of political science and public policy, and director of the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll Jason Husser was featured in a recent WFMY News 2 report examining a Republican super PAC’s decision to redirect millions of dollars in campaign funding away from North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race and toward other political contests.

The report highlights the significance of campaign spending decisions in the closely watched race between Republican Michael Whatley and Democrat Roy Cooper. The shift in funding raises questions about how national political organizations are prioritizing competitive Senate races ahead of the November election.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that they have lost all confidence and faith in him, but it does send a really strong message that North Carolina is no longer the top Senate race in the country right now,” Husser said.

This fall, at colleges and universities across the country, new campus presidents, provosts and deans are starting their appointments with a listening tour. Just saying the words at the beginning-of-the-year assembly might elicit an audible groan from a long-suffering faculty member seated somewhere in the back of the auditorium.

Listening tours have become such commonplace rituals, especially on campuses that have experienced frequent leadership turnover, that they will almost surely be met with a tepid reception, if not overt skepticism. A groan is a thoroughly warranted response to a tour performed perfunctorily—highly documented for social media and amounting to little more than some scribbles in a notebook and opportunities for the new dean to show off an impressive wardrobe of campus T-shirts.

And yet, newly arriving leaders are facing stakes that are higher than ever. When financial deficits and enrollment pressures are layered atop an overt air of politicization and simmering mistrust of administrators, listening tours take on newfound importance and scrutiny.

As leaders who have undertaken our own listening tours—and who have sat across the table sizing up new leaders on theirs—we offer some perspectives to elevate your listening tour into the leadership act that it is. We are entering our third and fourth years in our current roles, and many of these insights are only apparent to us now.

The biggest misconception about listening tours is that their primary purpose is to give you more information, context and time before making hard decisions. Structured conversations will almost surely reinforce what you already know, help you become fluent in the local jargon and deepen your well of arcane campus trivia. But you can probably gather this information, and perhaps more efficiently, in other ways.

See yourself first and foremost as an ethnographer. The real value of a listening tour is that it provides you with rich nuance and insights into interpersonal dynamics that can’t be found in the fact book. What you hear between groups and individuals—points of pride, sacred myths, where there is shared agreement and where there decidedly isn’t—equips you to take informed, calculated risks.

Your listening tour is, for all practical purposes, the first formal demonstration of how you lead. In most cases, it will be the single highest-leverage act of your first year on the job.

Here’s a truth worth saying plainly: While you are touring them, they are touring you. Every colleague across the table is running a quiet calculation of their own, deciding whether you are someone worth investing in or someone to wait out. The tour is a two-way audition, and the leader who understands that they, too, are onstage behaves differently (and often better) than those who assume the spotlight only points one way.

Read more on .

You already know what gas costs. You watch that number tick up on the drive to work every morning. Right now, it’s somewhere around $4.48 a gallon, give or take. That’s roughly a dollar and a half more than you were paying before February. If you farm or haul or drive an 18-wheeler, you know what diesel costs, and it’s worse.

Nobody needs CNN or other news organizations to tell them what’s observable. You can read a sign. What you might need a reporter for is the next part: why.

In late February, this country went to war with Iran. President Donald Trump said it would be over quickly. It is now month seven. The Strait of Hormuz, a channel in the Middle East through which a fifth of the world’s oil moves, has been contested since spring. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that gasoline jumped again in August, economists, market analysts and financial news outlets widely agreed that the war in the Middle East is the primary reason behind the price hike.

At least 18 American servicemembers are dead across the wider regional conflict, six of them in a drone strike on a base in Kuwait. The Pentagon has extended deployments into 2027 after telling families it wouldn’t. Ammunition stockpiles are thin enough that senior commanders have raised it with the Defense Secretary.

That is the reporting being done at CNN, MS NOW and Politico. It isn’t commentary, and it certainly isn’t somebody’s opinion about the president’s temperament. That is what the White House press corps has been filing for six months.

And it is that reporting the president continues to attack.

In March, when CNN reported that his national security team had not planned for Iran closing Hormuz, his press secretary declared the story fake news. This month, when outlets reported the ammunition shortages, he called the coverage treasonous. When the Defense Secretary was asked about coverage of dead American troops, he suggested it existed to make the president look bad.

Then on Sept. 18, the president announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House. On Sept. 19, their reporters were turned away at the gate and their passes taken. On Sept. 21, they sued.

Here is the part worth sitting with. In his social media post announcing the ban, and in everything he has said since, the president has not identified a single story that was wrong. Not one article, not one error, not one correction demanded. When he was asked directly whether he was trying to intimidate the press, he said the outlets write negative news to “diminish the Republicans.”

That is not a complaint about accuracy. That is a statement about an election.

And that’s what makes this different from the usual fight between a president and reporters who annoy him. Every president has hated his coverage. Trump claiming negative coverage is fake is not new. What is new is that he now readily admits coverage about the Middle East and consumer prices hurts Republicans six weeks before an election. And that’s the point of banning reporters from the White House.

So, ask yourself the practical question, the one that actually touches your life. What is it he doesn’t want you to see or hear before November?

It’s not the high prices, because Trump can’t hide that truth. It’s on a sign at eye level in every town in America, and he knows it. What Trump can do is interrupt the explanation. You are going to feel this war either way. The only question is whether you know that’s what you’re feeling, or whether you spend the next six weeks being told it’s somebody else’s fault: Ukraine, the Federal Reserve, Joe Biden, the oil companies, whoever’s available.

Trump is not protecting you from lies. He is betting that you can feel the pain of higher bills and not connect it to his choices.

That is a bet about you. Honestly, I’d take it personally if I were you.

And notice you don’t have to take a single news network’s word for any of it. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called for the Defense Secretary to be fired and said he had never seen more inept management of American servicemembers. The Army Secretary has resigned. The Navy’s top admiral and the commanders responsible for Europe, Asia and Latin America told the Secretary of Defense directly that the deployment could not be sustained. It’s the reporters who wrote it down. And now, they’re the ones who are out.

I know it’s easy to distrust information or news that conflicts with your beliefs. But there’s a difference between a press you distrust and a press the government gets to edit. The difference shows up exactly here: when the reporting is inconvenient, on a subject that costs you money, with a vote now five weeks away.

Verify every word they write. It’s not only your right but your obligation to hold the press accountable, as it holds the government accountable.

“The press was to serve the governed,” wrote Supreme Court Associate Justice Hugo Black in the Pentagon Papers case, “not the governors.” The First Amendment forbids “the Government’s power to censor the press” so that “the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.”

It is the duty of the press to “prevent any part of the government from deceiving” you. Just make sure you’re the one deciding what accurate information reaches you. Because right now Trump is making that call, and he’s making it on the theory that you’d change your mind if you knew.

Submissions for funding consideration will be accepted from Oct. 1 through Oct. 31. Funds awarded will come directly from contributions by Â鶹ĘÓƵ LA-based alumni, alumni from other geographic areas and contributions from other sources.

The 2025-26 grant competition awarded funds to Â鶹ĘÓƵ Los Angeles alumnae Julia Boyd ’15, Bex Evans ’16 and Mirai ’07. Their films had their world premieres last July at the sold-out Inaugural Â鶹ĘÓƵ Los Angeles Alumni Short Film Festival, at Sony Pictures Studios, in Culver City, California. For all three filmmakers, being awarded these funds and the world premiere event have been enormously impactful, both personally and professionally.

“Winning the grant gave me the seed money, a deadline and the accountability I needed to actually produce my film,” Mirai said of her project “#StopAsianKate,” which she wrote, produced and starred in. She proudly added, “Since its premiere at Sony, my film has gone on to screen at the Oscar-qualifying Hollyshorts Festival, the Catalina Film Festival and the Broad Humor Festival, where we won the Audience Award.”

Boyd, who received funds for her short film “The Life and Times of,” said, “Receiving this grant allowed me to create my narrative directorial debut and tell a story that is deeply personal to me in the exact way I want to.” She wrote, directed and starred in the film. Boyd added, “I feel so buoyed by the support I received from the Â鶹ĘÓƵ community as I make my creative dreams a reality.”

Evans, who was awarded a production grant for their short film “Shadow Dusk,” was thrilled to get a green light for their project.

“The Â鶹ĘÓƵ grant gave me a great base to start making a film I’d been thinking about for years,” said Evans. “It was great for requiring accountability, giving me a framework to start from and affirming for me that this was something that I could do.”

Selected filmmakers are required to make production, performance and other opportunities available in their projects for students who are participating in the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Los Angeles Spring 2027 immersive experience.

Funding award decisions will be made by a selection committee comprised of Â鶹ĘÓƵ community-associated and entertainment industry-affiliated individuals. The announcement of award recipients will be made in December.

Â鶹ĘÓƵ alumnus Jordan Roman ’15, who co-chaired the selection committee for the 2025-26 grant competition, will serve as chair of the selection committee for this year’s competition.

“The dream was to create to a program to remove the barriers to (production) funding for our LA alumni grant recipients and to provide Â鶹ĘÓƵ Los Angeles students with an opportunity for hands-on learning experiences in the professional production process,” Roman said. “With such great work coming out of last year’s competition, we’re all excited to see the great submissions we’re expecting for funding consideration this year.”

The three projects selected for production will have their world premieres at a special festival screening event at Sony Pictures Studios in July 2027.

For information about the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Los Angeles Alumni Short Film Grant Competition and for detailed submission requirements, visit the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Los Angeles National Campus alumni grant information page.

A conversation with last year’s grant recipients, via Zoom, will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET). The online gathering will explore how to create, craft and submit a grant award-worthy submission package with an opportunity to ask questions about the process. To receive a link to join the Zoom session, e-mail LAShortFilms@elon.edu.

For nearly 20 years, Â鶹ĘÓƵ, through Study USA and National Campus Programs, has had a thriving presence in historic Hollywood, where students have an opportunity to spend a spring semester or summer core capstone program immersed in professional development-focused academic classes, experiential learning, community service and alumni engagement.

Â鶹ĘÓƵ Assistant Professor of Finance Andrew Schwartz provided expert insight for a recent WalletHub article examining how credit card companies determine whether to instantly approve online applicants and what consumers should do if they don’t receive an immediate decision.

Schwartz explained that most credit card issuers now rely on automated underwriting systems that consider an applicant’s credit report alongside information such as income to determine approval and credit limits.

“Today, it is uncommon not to receive a decision within a few minutes,” Schwartz said. “When a decision is delayed, it is usually because the issuer needs additional time or documentation to verify information such as your identity or income.”

Schwartz advised consumers not to assume a delayed decision means their application will be denied. He also recommended responding promptly to requests for additional information and avoiding applying for other credit cards while waiting.

“Multiple applications in a short period can result in additional hard inquiries and make a borrower appear to be in desperate need of credit, which could make lenders more cautious,” Schwartz said.

Among likely voters (those who said it is “absolutely certain” or “very likely” they will vote), Cooper was favored by 49%, with Whatley favored by 38%. Eight percent were undecided and candidates Shannon Bray (Libertarian) and Michael Dublin (Green) were favored by two percent each.

Among all those who said they were registered to vote, Cooper is favored by 49% and Whatley is favored by 36%, with 14% saying they were undecided or planned to vote for someone else and 2% saying they do not plan to vote.

The survey of 800 North Carolina adults was conducted August 21-31, 2026, and has a margin of error for likely voters of 5.6%.

Seventy-two percent of poll respondents said they are registered to vote in the state, with 63% of those registered voters saying it is absolutely certain they will vote in November and another 20% saying it is very likely they will vote.

In this survey, 71% of registered voters said they had heard “a great deal” or “some” about Cooper, who was North Carolina governor from 2017 to 2025 and previously served 16 years as the state’s attorney general. In comparison, 47% said they had heard “a great deal” or “some” about Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party.

Fifteen percent said they had heard nothing at all about Whatley compared with only 4% who had heard nothing at all about Cooper.

Regardless of who they personally plan to vote for, 54% of registered voters predicted that Cooper will win the race, compared with 29% who predicted that Whatley will win.

“Despite an increase in advertising, we measured relatively little movement over the last month in voter intentions about the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina, with Democratic candidate Roy Cooper maintaining a strong lead over Republican Michael Whatley,” said Jason Husser, director of the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll and a professor of political science and public policy. “The race continues to appear competitive among the group of voters who are highly familiar with Whatley. However, the size of that group remains relatively small and slowly growing.

“Now that we have passed Labor Day, campaigning will approach full velocity, offering some final opportunity for Whatley to increase familiarity and narrow Cooper’s lead in the race.”

Questions about the voting process

Â鶹ĘÓƵ half (51%) of registered voters said they plan to cast their votes in person during the early voting period that runs October 15-31. Thirty-five percent plan to vote in person at the polls on November 3 and only about 8% plan to cast their votes by mail.

Under state law, county election boards began distributing absentee ballots to those who had requested them on September 4.

found that 40 other states had higher vote-by-mail numbers than North Carolina in 2022, when only 5 percent of ballots in the state were cast by mail. Nationwide, about one in three Americans cast their votes by mail in the 2024 general election.

In August, President Trump issued an executive order that would give the U.S. Postal Service control over the issuance of mail-in ballots in this year’s election. Following court decisions blocking that action, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the case, threatening to create serious questions about the voting process just weeks before the election.

“We find a substantial majority of registered voters in North Carolina to be satisfied with the status quo on length of early voting,” Husser said. “Though Democrats reported somewhat higher rates than Republicans of planning to vote early in the upcoming election, only a small minority of voters in either political party told us early voting is too long.”

In August, Gov. Josh Stein vetoed a bill passed by the North Carolina General Assembly to reduce the number of early voting days for primary elections in the state. In this survey, 56% of poll respondents said the length of the early voting period in statewide elections is about right, with 11% saying early voting is too short, 11% saying early voting is too long and 22% unsure.

Issues on voters’ minds

Among registered voters, 51% said they were extremely or very excited to cast their ballots and 83% said this year’s election was extremely or somewhat important for real-world outcomes in their lives.

Pocketbook issues were at the top of registered voters’ minds as they make their voting decisions. Eighty-six percent said inflation and the cost of living are “very important” issues, with 73% saying the general economy and healthcare are “very important.”

Other “very important” issues included taxes (66%), Social Security (64%), personal character of candidates (60%), immigration (54%), the war in Iran (50%) and the environment (43%).

Grading the health of the nation’s economy, 49% of registered voters gave grades of “D” and “F”, with 30% assigning a “C” grade and only 22% giving “A” or “B” grades.

Related to the war with Iran, 52% of registered voters opposed the U.S. military involvement compared with 31% who supported it. Â鶹ĘÓƵ 40% said a year from now America will be less safe as a result of U.S. military actions in Iran, with 30% saying America will be more safe.

“Voters are placing very high emphasis on the economy, especially the cost of living, and voters are overwhelming thinking the economy is not good,” Husser said. “This is driving a great deal of attitudes towards both President Trump and Congressional candidates of his party. While much of the national political focus over the next two months will be on the performance of individual candidates and their campaigns, many political outcomes will be influenced at least as much by the ongoing performance of the economy.”

Approval ratings

This survey gathered new data on approval ratings for President Donald Trump and N.C. Gov. Josh Stein.

Among all poll respondents, 54% disapproved of the job Trump is doing as president and 31% approved. While Trump’s disapproval numbers in North Carolina have stayed roughly the same during 2026, his approval rating in this survey was the lowest recorded by the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll since Trump took office in January 2025.

Stein had a 40% approval rating, a drop of 6% from the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll conducted at the end of July. Stein’s disapproval numbers stayed steady at 25%.

Poll Methodology

Access the poll topline and methodology at: www.elon.edu/elonpoll. The survey was developed by the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll and fielded by the international marketing and polling firm YouGov as an online, web-based survey, self-administered through online panels. Between August 21 and August 31, 2026, YouGov interviewed 1,121 North Carolina adults aged 18 and older. These respondents were then matched down to a sample of 800 to produce the final dataset.

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores based on age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, and home ownership. The margin of error for likely voters in this survey is +/- 5.6%, for registered voters in this survey (adjusted for weights) the margin of error is +/-5.05%, and the margin of error for all adults in this survey is +/-5.09%.

Â鶹ĘÓƵ the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll

Established in 2000, the Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll conducts national and North Carolina surveys on issues of importance to voters and residents. Information from these polls is shared with media, citizens and public officials to facilitate informed public policymaking through the better understanding of citizens’ opinions and attitudes. The poll is fully funded by Â鶹ĘÓƵ and operates as the neutral, non-biased information resource.

The Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll is a charter member of the , a program created by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) in 2014 to educate polling firms on ways to better share how they collect and interpret their information. The Â鶹ĘÓƵ Poll’s voluntary participation in this initiative signifies a willingness to clearly state in its reports how questions were asked, in what order, who funded the poll and who conducted it, and a definition of the population under study, among other details.