New presidential polls affirm: North Carolina isn’t really a red state | Opinion

Just in time for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll showed what seemed implausible just weeks ago: the Democratic nominee has a real chance at winning North Carolina. Vice President Kamala Harris has been able to take advantage of the state’s political environment in a way President Joe Biden couldn’t.

It means the state might for the second time play an integral role in electing a Black president — and that N.C. Republicans can’t gerrymander away that possibility.

For North Carolina residents, it means the state will see plenty more of Harris between now and early November. She traveled to the state last week to unveil the first major policy of her still-new campaign. With a victory, she would become the first woman in U.S. history to lead the nation, as well as the first American of South Asian descent and the second Black person. In 2008, North Carolina voted for Barack Obama, our first Black president.

Because North Carolina is closely contested, former President Donald Trump will likely be revisiting often as well, guaranteeing the national spotlight will remain on the state. During recent visits, Harris unveiled an economic plan detailed enough for economists to debate, while Trump continued talking about crowd size while he was supposed to focus on the economy.

The contrast couldn’t be sharper.

The New York Times poll has Harris at 49% to Trump’s 47% in North Carolina, within the poll’s margin of error. Other polls have it about the same or flipped, meaning the race is essentially tied. On Tuesday, The Center For Politics’ “Crystal Ball” moved the presidential race in North Carolina into its toss-up category. It was previously “lean Republican.”

North Carolina isn’t nearly as red as the Republican veto-proof supermajority in the General Assembly would suggest. It’s just that the state is among those with undemocratic gerrymandered maps. After a series of sometimes-confusing and contradictory court rulings, gerrymanders are in place in North Carolina that were deemed unconstitutional and racially discriminatory against Black voters. The state Supreme Court struck down one discriminatory map, and a newly-constituted Republican dominant court let the map stand.

In 2013, a panel of federal judges struck down a map they said N.C. Republicans had drawn with “almost surgical precision” to target Black voters.

Other federal judges, including one who had represented Republicans in North Carolina redistricting disputes before he was appointed to the bench , OK’d what fellow Republicans were doing. It was all made possible by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act and, with a wink and a nod, told Republicans as long as they didn’t make gerrymanders specifically about race — though they could substitute a partisanship that would lead to the same results — they could continue making the state undemocratic.

That’s why the outcome of the 2024 presidential race in North Carolina is vitally important. Republican-led courts can’t prevent voters statewide from handing North Carolina’s Electoral College votes to Harris (or choosing Josh Stein to replace Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper).

Such an outcome is the only real chance N.C. residents will have to begin turning the state back into a true democracy. It’s the only chance to begin reversing gerrymanders that mean Republicans don’t have to work to gain a representative majority of voters up and down the ticket. As of now, Republicans know they can keep a veto-proof majority of power in the state legislature without having to convince a majority of Tar Heels that they deserve so much power.

North Carolina voting for Harris won’t guarantee that state-level gerrymanders will be undone, just as Obama’s 2008 win in the state didn’t prevent N.C. Republican leaders from diminishing the voices of those who belong to a different party.

A Harris win would send a message that the state is once again ready for something unprecedented in the nation’s history — and that a good portion of its residents still value a healthy version of democracy.