It’s a truism of North Carolina’s politics that every four years, the Republican presidential nominee wins the state's electoral votes while a Democrat takes the governorship. For partisans, it’s like a bowling split, when a player knocks down some pins in a set of 10 but leaves others standing — a decent score electorally but still somewhat unsatisfying.
That could change this year, with the political version of a 10-pin strike, sweeping both contests. All in a campaign culminating in North Carolina on Nov. 5 — the election is already underway since the state began mailing absentee ballots on Sept. 6.
After all, North Carolina has emerged as a battleground in the open White House race between Vice President Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump . While the open governorship pits Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein against North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee.
Electoral splits have been the norm for decades in North Carolina, one of 12 states to hold gubernatorial elections simultaneously with presidential races. In eight of 11 gubernatorial races, stretching back to 1980, Republicans won North Carolina’s presidential Electoral College votes — while, at the same time, a Democrat won North Carolina’s governorship.
Ultra-politically competitive North Carolina in statewide races is “as close as a toss-up as exists in American politics,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.
It is a situation compounded by President Joe Biden’s exit from the race and quick endorsement of Harris. While Biden almost certainly would have lost North Carolina, Democrats now have a chance at winning its 16 electoral votes, with 270 nationally needed to secure victory. And that’s likely to help Stein, as he and GOP rival Robinson fight to succeed Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), who is leaving office due to term limits.
“If Joe Biden were at the top of the ticket, we’re having a different conversation,” Cooper said in an interview.
Republican presidential race dominance in North Carolina
Republican presidential nominees have won North Carolina in each election since 1980 except for 2008. That year, future President Barack Obama prevailed over GOP rival John McCain 49.70% to 49.38%, a 14,177-vote difference out of more than 4.3 million cast.
In 2020, Biden, the former two-term vice president and previously a 36-year Democratic senator from Delaware, lost in North Carolina by less than 2 percentage points . That turned out to be Biden’s narrowest defeat in a state as he deposed Trump from office after a single term.
This year, a Democratic win in North Carolina would make a Trump presidential victory almost impossible. He’d have to sweep a swath of other swing states, such as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
North Carolina’s presidential fight this year overlaps considerably with its heated gubernatorial race. Both parties hope that the gubernatorial contest will increase enthusiasm among their voting bases and flow upward to the presidential ballot line. In particular, Democratic nominee Stein, the state’s attorney general, aims to connect Trump with GOP gubernatorial nominee Robinson, who has a history of offensive and incendiary remarks .
North Carolina is so hotly contested that the presidential candidates are regular visitors to the state, with a population of nearly 11 million people. The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), and Trump’s Republican understudy, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), also appear frequently in North Carolina. Candidate ads on television, radio, online, social media, and other spots are becoming ubiquitous with absentee balloting underway.
“It’s neck and neck in North Carolina. I think it’s the visits and the amount of advertising that indicates how close it really is,” political science professor David McLennan at Raleigh-based Meredith College said in an interview.
However, “our governor’s race is a slightly different animal than the presidential race,” added McLennan, also director of the Meredith Poll. “Even though the Democratic candidate is favored to win, it’s going to be a lot closer” than recent polls showing Stein with a sizable lead over Robinson.
Most presidential polls at this point show the race could go either way, even though Democrats have been disappointed before. Obama’s 2008 win, in a sense, provided Democrats a false sense of security in a state with arguably the most polarized political climate between rural and heavily concentrated population areas as any in the nation, with Republicans dominating the former and Democrats the latter.
Democrats, to have a shot at winning, must turn out heavily in North Carolina’s two fastest-growing counties, Wake, taking in the state capital of Raleigh and surrounding areas, and Charlotte-based Mecklenburg.
In Wake County, “once-rural roads to Raleigh are now clogged with commuters headed for jobs in new office parks,” the Almanac of American Politics 2024 noted. About 17 miles northeast, in the nearby city of Rolesville, “farmlands have been transformed into subdivisions and commercial developments.”
Biden beat Trump in 2020 in Wake County 62.25% to 35.80%. While a 2 1/2-hour drive south in the Charlotte area, Biden won 66.68% to 31.60%.
Harris will have to do at least that well this time while running against Trump, Cooper said.
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Democrats contend they can and point to their success in Georgia as an example. Biden’s 2020 win in the Southern state was the first by a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992. But North Carolina’s black population, a traditionally Democratic constituency, is a bit under 24%. That’s helpful for Democrats, to be sure, but still well short of Georgia’s 33%-plus black population. Moreover, North Carolina’s level of professional class workers in its population is significant but also behind Georgia.
“Charlotte, Raleigh, these are big cities. But they’re not Atlanta,” Cooper said.
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