The Tar Heel Tease
Can Harris break it
The Tar Heel Tease
Can Harris Break It?
North Carolina, in presidential politics, teases Democrats. After not winning a Presidential election there for more than four decades, Barack Obama won in 2008, as he did in Virginia, supposedly ushering in a new political era for these moderate Southern states.
But Democrats fell short in the Tar Heel state in the next three national elections. Recent public polls and the Democrats private surveys both suggest a dead heat. The last few elections Democrats slightly underperformed the final polls.
Virginia, by contrast, turned blue sixteen years ago and has stayed that way,
North Carolina, along with Georgia, where Democrats eked out a win last time, are critical backups if Harris loses any of the Blue Wall states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, in order for her to get to the necessary 270 electoral votes. If, for example, she lost Pennsylvania, she'd have to win one of those southern states and Nevada.
Conversely, to win, Trump needs to keep North Carolina, which he won last time by only a little more than a percent.
I had lunch this week in Wake Forest, N.C., with seven voters; they underscored challenges for both candidates. The Trump supporters don't like him personally but figure he's probably better on the economy than what they consider the Biden-Harris performance. A key for the Democrats is to win over a slice of the almost 250,000 who voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary this spring even after she had dropped out of the contest.