Unfortunately for Pat McCrory, the election for governor won't be held today.

According to a new poll, McCrory has a 14 point lead over Beverly Perdue in a hypothetical rematch of last year's election. The poll, conducted for the conservative-leaning Civitas Institute asked 600 voters who they would pick in a gubernatorial election between Perdue, a Democrat, and McCrory, a Republican.

McCrory got 46 percent and Perdue 32 percent. Another 22 percent were not sure.

"It’s pretty clear that many voters in North Carolina are now having buyer’s remorse," said Civitas Institute Senior Legislative Analyst Chris Hayes.

The hypothetical re-match may not be too far fetched. 

The poll also asked if voters would re-elect Perdue if the election were today.

The poll found that 55 percent said no, 26 percent said yes and 19 percent were not sure.

The poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, was conducted by Tel Opinion Research of Alexandria, Virginia from July 14 to 17.

* Gov. Beverly Perdue notes that she never said she'd never furlough; state workers representatives say they're not happy but can live with it.

* Conservative blogger Chris Hayes says what Perdue did was not a furlough, it was a pay cut; speculates that's a frame to sell the plan better.

* Republican consultant Carter Wrenn defends UNC president Erskine Bowles from criticism that he's too busy to run the state colleges.

* All anyone can suggest for Dome's Official North Carolina State Rock Song contest is ... well, you know ... by James Taylor. Other suggestions?

* Former judicial candidate Rachel Lea Hunter could lose her law license for continuing to use the nickname "Madame Justice" on her Web site.

* Conservative blogger Chris Hayes notes that the top five in that poll of CEOs of best business states are all anti-union.

* The Charlotte Observer's Jack Betts says U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan's panel to screen federal judicial candidates as a change from the past.

* Public Policy Polling finds President Obama's approval/disapproval at 53/40 in North Carolina; Hagan's at 36/34. 

The Civitas Institute is defending its polling.

After reading critiques of the conservative think tank's question wording on Dome, pollster Chris Hayes wrote to say that its mission is being misunderstood.

Hayes said that the think tank is trying to determine the political science on a particular issue, not the social science. While the Elon University Poll aims to find out the complex thoughts people have on the death penalty, Civitas wants to know how they'll vote.

"You could ask people a lengthy survey on their feelings about the death penalty and under which conditions they favor what punishment and get a whole series of what-ifs and partial realities," he said. "But then ask the students of UNC-Chapel Hill if they want to see the two guys who murdered Eve Carson to be executed and you probably get a different answer."

He said Civitas is looking for the "gut reaction" that causes voters to favor one candidate or issue — one reason it polls likely voters and not all residents, as Elon does.

"The Elon poll is more after the answer to the why question," he said. "We're not. Politics is not played on ambivalence. Elections are decided by finding out the issues that move people."

Chris Hayes uses polls to find out what voters think of the issues.

As a legislative policy analyst for the conservative Civitas Institute since 2005, Hayes helps write the questions for 11 monthly DecisionMaker polls.

The polls are conducted by live operators working with TelOpinion Research in Alexandria, Va. Except for one poll a year, questions are closed, meaning that respondents are forced to answer one of the available options.

In the past, liberal groups have argued that some Civitas questions are biased, but Hayes says his goal is to find out the mood of the electorate.

"We're looking at the voters who we think will be making the decisions and what they are thinking," he said. "We do a lot on specific proposals before the General Assembly. We definitely have a niche there."

Civitas typically polls 800 people who have voted in the last two statewide general elections or registered to vote in the last two years. In light of high turnout, they recently loosened their standards to the last three elections.

That method makes their numbers in primary races less reliable, but Hayes says their poll is not focused on the horse race anyway.

Previously: Meet Hunter Bacot, Tom Jensen. 

The ethics forms for state legislators have been put online—but not by the state.

The Civitas Institute has scanned and posted the financial disclosure forms filed by members of the state House and the state Senate on its Citizen Legislature Web site.

The forms are posted in TIF format, which means they are essentially images, but they can be easily read or printed out. It would still be difficult to reverse-search the forms to see which legislators own stock in a particular company, for example.

Chris Hayes with Civitas says the group has posted all 2006 forms from sitting legislators and plans to post the 2007 forms soon. (Click here for an example.)

Still, that leaves out the forms filed by local judges, district attorneys and appointees, which was the focus of Mark Binker's earlier complaint. 

And it begs the question of why the N.C. Ethics Commission doesn't post these itself. 

Previously: The principles of online sunshine. 

A conservative blogger says Richard Moore's roads reform plan is a "good first step."

On Red Clay Citizen, Chris Hayes writes that the problem isn't that Board of Transportation members are raising money after they've been appointed, but they are raising money to get on the board.

How about enact a regulation that says if you or any member of your family is a campaign contributor, you can't serve on any Board that has spending or regulatory authority.

Let's take it one step further and stop the game of people raising tens of thousands of dollars for (wink, wink) a seat on the BOT.

Still, he gives "kudos to Moore" for addressing the issue. 

A conservative blogger is attacking Democrats for not backing Jim Neal.

At Red Clay Citizen, Chris Hayes writes that the party is acting hypocritically by (rumor says) trying to recruit state Sen. Kay Hagan to run for Senate against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

Is this leading Democrats admitting that they don't think a homosexual man can get elected statewide in North Carolina? If they truly believed sexual orientation doesn't matter, then why not jump in and throw full support behind Jim Neal?

Hayes writes that it's "a wee bit convenient" that national Democrats are recruiting Hagan after they pursued state Rep. Grier Martin, "now that the only other option is a gay man."

This is a rare moment of agreement between Hayes and BlueNC bloggers. 

The Civitas Institute says it has no ties to an ethics complaint.

Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, a Concord Republican, told the Charlotte Observer that he believed a complaint filed by a group of Cabarrus County residents was encouraged by the conservative nonprofit.

But in a post on the Red Clay Citizen blog, Chris Hayes said that while it had heard about a potential complaint, it did not know any of the participants before or afterward.

The Civitas Institute, nor any of its employees, had anything to do with the filing of the ethics complaint and did not encourage its filing.

The complaint says that Hartsell helped shepherd a bill through the legislature that will help one of his former law clients. Hartsell did not vote on the bill, citing a potential conflict of interest, but he did help guide it through committee.

Does North Carolina need to elect a superintendent of public instruction?

In a post on publicly financed campaigns on Red Clay Citizen, Chris Hayes argues that the position is "little more of a figure head" since the state Board of Education holds so much power.

What about Agriculture or Labor Commissioner? Shouldn't these positions just be appointed by the Governor? If anything we should be electing the Secretary of Transportation, maybe then we can see some accountability out of that department.

In a 2005 column, Rob Christensen pointed out that North Carolina's long-ago suspicion of royal governors gave rise to the long list of elected statewide offices in North Carolina.

Recent efforts to reverse the trend have failed. Chris Heagarty of the N.C. Center for Voter Education told Dome that its polling showed voters were loath to give up the power to choose in those races, even if they don't pay particular attention to them.

An alternative would be to go whole hog and elect all the Cabinet positions...