Swing State Deep Dive: North Carolina

Of the seven battleground states – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia – there is just one that stayed loyal to Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020: North Carolina. The Tar Heel State will now test Kamala Harris and the Democrats as they attempt to turn North Carolina blue for just the third time since 1968.

Don’t let its name fool you: North Carolina, with its world-class barbecue and bluegrass bands, is a southern state. Or, it is at least an Appalachian/southern hybrid, making its voter base a difficult one for new-age Democrats to tap into. 

North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes – the eighth most of any U.S. state – have gone to Republican candidates all but twice since 1968. Barack Obama won the Tar Heel vote by just 0.3 points (14,000 votes) in 2008, and Jimmy Carter won by a healthy 11.1 points in 1976, back when population dispersals looked quite different than they do today. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 3.5 points, and while Biden narrowed Trump’s winning margin to 1.3 in 2020, North Carolina still went red.

Yet Democrats have hope that North Carolina’s shifting demographics – from 2010 to 2022, North Carolina’s non-white population grew from 34.7% to 38.5% – and its growing metropolitan areas like Charlotte and Raleigh will help pull the state left.

More than one in five (21%) North Carolina voters are black, the second highest of the seven swing states (Georgia is highest). High turnout among North Carolina’s black population helped Barack Obama win in 2008, and Harris is hoping to capitalize on similar enthusiasm. The NY Times poll showed that 84% of black voters in North Carolina support Harris, while just 9% support Trump.

The last time Harris appeared in North Carolina was at a rally in the city of Greensboro on Sept. 12 to revel in what many considered a strong debate performance just two days earlier. Harris turned out more than 17,000 people in the city of 300,000, a good sign for Democrats. She trotted out the popular but term-limited Democratic governor of the state, Roy Cooper, to speak to the crowd.

“There’s a reason why Donald Trump spent more money in August in North Carolina than any other state – because they’re panicking,” Cooper said in an interview after the rally. “They know that Kamala Harris is at least tied or maybe even taking the lead in North Carolina. Donald Trump has no other path to the presidency. He must win North Carolina.”

Cooper made two statements worth dissecting in that interview. First, is Harris really taking the lead in North Carolina? Cooper may have been correct when he made this statement on Sept. 12, but Trump has since been met with increased support in the polls. The former president is currently up 0.6 points in the RCP Average with the latest NY Times/Siena poll placing Trump 2 points ahead of Harris in North Carolina, 49%-47%.

The North Carolina governor also made quite a final statement about Trump needing a victory in North Carolina to win the White House. While it is possible for Trump to win the election without North Carolina, his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance was right when he said last week, “It’s very hard for us to win unless we’re able to get North Carolina.”

It is true that the Trump campaign outspent the Harris team in North Carolina last month, quite the feat given Harris’ impressive budget. Democrats take the spending as a good sign: Trump is worried. The former president hopes to take the eastern route – Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia – to victory, a gamble given how purple both Pennsylvania and Georgia have become.

Trump’s efforts have also been undermined by the Republican gubernatorial candidate for Cooper’s open seat, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. After a shocking CNN report that Robinson called himself a “black Nazi” on a porn website over a decade ago, Robinson has become politically toxic, and Democrats are happily using the report to paint MAGA Republicans as extreme: Billboard trucks already circulate warnings that Robinson is “unhinged.”  

Trump made an appearance in the Tar Heel State on Wednesday, his second in less than a week. Robinson was noticeably absent from the rally – Trump previously touted the candidate as “Martin Luther King on steroids”  – as the former president spoke about the U.S. economy in the small suburban town of Mint Hill.

There have been no polls released on the governor’s race since the report, but Attorney General Josh Stein was up 10.1 points in the RCP Average even before CNN’s exposé. Stein had seen success highlighting some of Robinson’s other controversial comments, such as referring to homosexuality and “transgenderism” as “filth” and calling abortion “murder” and “genocide.” Stein’s bolstered good fortune is part of the reason Democrats feel North Carolina is in play for Harris.

Winning North Carolina would not guarantee the White House for Harris, but it would suggest that enthusiasm for her candidacy is on par with 2008 Obama levels of support, which would likely translate into victories across the country. North Carolina’s growing suburban and non-white populations, alongside its solid base of black voters and the nasty scandal for Republicans in the state, suggest that Tar Heel voters are up for grabs. Still, Trump has the fundamentals, and will undoubtedly take advantage of them.