SOUTHERN SLEEPER — Of the seven battleground states that will likely decide the presidency, North Carolina might be the sleeper. Until Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, it wasn’t even considered in play this year. After all, Donald Trump had won it twice already; the state has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate just once since 1976. At the moment, however, North Carolina is looking like a photo finish. The FiveThirtyEight polling average puts Trump ahead by a mere 0.7 percentage points. That’s a big problem for his campaign, since a loss there would blow a gaping hole in Trump’s electoral strategy. Why? Because after decades of non-stop growth, North Carolina now has 16 electoral votes up for grabs — that’s more than Wisconsin (10), more than traditional giant Michigan (15) and almost as many Pennsylvania (19). As part of Nightly’s efforts to illuminate the battleground states that will decide the presidency, tonight we’ll hear from Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, where he directs the Center for North Carolina Politics & Public Service. As the author of Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina: Battlelines in the Tar Heel State, and founder of the political blog, Old North State Politics , Bitzer is an insightful observer of state politics — and a voice that Nightly pays close attention to. While he grew up just across the border in South Carolina, he’s lived in North Carolina for more than two decades. What issues are dominating the political debate in North Carolina this year? Are they different than in any of the other battleground states? North Carolinians have been focused on the issues that seem to dominate the national conversation in this year’s campaign. The economy and inflation are the leading concern for voters, but beyond that it appears to break down among partisan topics of concern, namely immigration for Republicans versus abortion for Democrats. North Carolina appears to be in league with other battleground states and the issue importance of economics first, followed by a partisan divide regarding other issue priorities. In 2000, North Carolina’s two most populous counties — Wake (Raleigh) and Mecklenburg (Charlotte) — both voted for Republican George W. Bush. Twenty years later, they delivered landslide margins to Democrat Joe Biden. What changed over those two decades? North Carolina’s urban counties have come to mirror national dynamics, with Democrats becoming the dominant party that appeals to urban lifestyles and demographics. Combining the votes out of the state’s major urban areas, such as Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, and other major metropolitan central cities, 2020’s election saw a 70-30 Democratic dominance when combining the US presidential, US Senate, and governor’s contests together. The sheer growth of these urban areas over the past 24 years has had a huge impact on the state’s politics, but contributes to a packing of Democratic votes into these areas that require a special focus to motivate these voters to get to the polls and avoid the complacency of staying at home because these urban centers are so Democratic. With lower turnout rates in urban cities, these counties lessen their impact on statewide races and potentially to Democratic chances of flipping the state at the federal level. After Texas, North Carolina has the largest rural population in the nation. How does that affect the state’s political dynamics? North Carolina’s rural counties have also undergone the national dynamic of a Republican realignment, but the rural areas are not the most Republican region of the state. This is due to the influence of majority-minority counties in the eastern part of the state, part of the South’s historic “Black Belt” line of counties with large populations of Black voters. The most Republican region of the state would be the surrounding suburban counties to the urban counties: they are typically 65-35 Republican, whereas rural counties combined are 60-40 Republican. What are the most notable electoral or demographic distinctions between North Carolina and this year’s other Southern swing state, Georgia? The two states do share some commonality, most notably in the dominance of urban Democratic votes and the generational divide. If Democrats want to win statewide in Georgia, the key is often the 30-30 rule: 30 percent of the White vote goes Democratic, while the overall electorate is 30 percent Black/African American. The other critical component to Georgia politics is the behemoth of the Atlanta metro region and its influence on vote totals. However, for Democrats to win statewide in North Carolina, they must follow a couple of specific Tar Heel politics rules. First, generate critical turnout rates among their core voters, namely Black voters. In the past few elections, registered Black voters in North Carolina have seen a lower-than-statewide average turnout rate, while White voters are above the state’s turnout rate. Registered Democrats typically meet the state-turnout rate, but it doesn’t help when their opposition (registered Republicans) have a five-to-six point advantage in their turnout rates. A generational dynamic is clearly at play in North Carolina: in 2020, the turnout for registered Boomers in the state was 86 percent, while among Millennials it was 62 percent and Generation Z saw a turnout rate of 61 percent. Finally, North Carolina doesn’t have a centralized “Atlanta-metro” dynamic when it comes to vote share, with the major urban areas spread across the Piedmont of the state. What does Donald Trump’s path to victory look like in North Carolina? What about Kamala Harris? Trump’s campaign can rely on a historically better-than-average turnout rate of Republican-aligned voters compared to Democratic voters in North Carolina. But unlike recent elections, that GOP advantage may be tested this year, due to Biden’s and now Harris’ campaign investing heavily in field offices and grassroots GOTV operations. Harris’ campaign appears to have more North Carolina field offices than Obama’s 2008 campaign did, while the Trump campaign appears to have farmed out their GOTV operations to third-party groups. North Carolina is ultimately a ‘battle on the ground’ contest with a very small ‘persuadable/swing voter’ slice to its electorate. This is due to the state’s stark partisan loyalty and polarization, and the real impact that mobilization can have on the statewide electorate. The other key piece to North Carolina is currently an unknown: what do the 250,000 Nikki Haley GOP primary voters from March of this year do on November 5? Trump won North Carolina by less than 75,000 votes in 2020, and any party defections by typical Republican voters at the top of the ticket — for both president and governor — can again provide that small shift in the electorate that could produce significant consequences in the results. If you had to pick the winner of the state and you could know just one number or fact about the racial, ethnic, generational or partisan composition of the electorate on Election Day, what would it be and why? In analyzing North Carolina precincts’ 2020 electorates, there was a clear relationship between older voters and younger voters regarding the Republican vote share in a precinct. As the percentage of Boomers and Silent generation increased in a North Carolina precinct in 2020, the Republican vote saw a significant rise. However, when the percentage of Millennials and Gen Z voters increased in a precinct, the Republican vote saw a significant drop. As noted earlier, if Millennials and Gen Z voters in North Carolina (both cohorts combined are 42 percent of the state’s 7.7 million registered voters) punch up to their political weight, the state could see a fundamental change from its competitive but stuck Republican allegiance at the federal level. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie.
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