2024 Leaner Deep Dive and Forecast: North Carolina (16 Electoral Votes)

Topic: 2024 Election Forecast

NORTH CAROLINA

Basic Election Facts

2024 Electoral Votes: 16

Population (2020 Census): 10,439,388 (+903,905 since 2010)

Likely Population at 2024 Election: 11,000,000

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Partisanship

Governor Party: Democrat

State House Majority: Republican

State House Majority: Republican

U.S. House Delegation: 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans

U.S. Senate Delegation: 2 Republicans

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Ethnic Demographics (2020 census)

White: 60.5%

Black: 20.2%

Latino: 10.7%

Other: 8.6%

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Presidential History since 1932

Times Republican: 12

Last: Donald Trump, 2020, +1.3%

Times Democrat: 11

Last: Barack Obama, 2008, +0.3%

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Presidential Election Characteristics

·      North Carolina was once a hardcore member of the Democrat “Solid South,” backing all but one Democrat presidential nominee (1928) between 1876 and 1964.  Since 1968, it has backed just two Democrats (Carter 1976, Obama 2008), although the state still barely maintains a rapidly eroding Democrat registration advantage.

·      The state recognizes three geographical and cultural regions.  The Mountains in the west is a heavily conservative region, The Piedmont of central North Carolina is a highly urbanized, Democrat leaning region, and The Coastal Plain is a heavily Republican region with a large transplant population.

·      While there are many small, longstanding Democrat strongholds, Democrats get most of their strength from the Research Triangle counties located in north central North Carolina, and from Mecklenburg County, the home county of metro Charlotte.  Three counties (Mecklenburg, Wake, and Durham) provided Biden a margin of greater than 100,000 ballots in 2020, and with most of the state on a heavy Republican trend, they have to produce substantially for statewide Democrats to have a shot at victory.

Looking Back

North Carolina, as mentioned above, has been shedding its “Solid South” Democrat registration advantage rapidly and has been advancing in a mostly Republican direction except for the 2008 Obama hiccup, which was not outside the realm of possible outcomes based on the shift in registration index and his popularity nationwide in a left-swinging cycle.

·      Bush ‘04 – won North Carolina by 12.4% (+435,317) with Democrat registration advantage D+12.2%

·      McCain ’08 – lost North Carolina by 0.3% (-14,177) with Democrat registration advantage D+13.8%, corroborating a leftward move

·      Romney ’12 – won North Carolina by 2.0% (+92,004) with Democrat registration advantage D+12.3%, corroborating a rightward move

·      Trump ’16 – won North Carolina by 3.7% (+173,315) with Democrat registration advantage D+9.3%, corroborating a rightward move

North Carolina was clearly part of the MAGA sweep along with Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and other Bush-won states essential to getting Trump over 270 electoral votes.  The Democrats lost more than 137,000 net registrations between the 2012 and 2016 campaigns, while Republicans under Trump added fewer than 35,000 net.  That alone was enough to move the state nearly two more points to the right for Trump, who added just 82,236 votes to Romney’s ledger.

Trump then went on a rampage in 2020, with registrations more than a quarter-million more favorable to the GOP at just D+5.3%, with nearly 145,000 net new registrations for Republicans, and over 110,000 fewer for Democrats.  To top it off, this time around, Trump gained 396,144 net new votes, the largest gain for a Republican from the previous election since George Bush’s leap in 2000 from Bob Dole’s 1996 performance, which pushed the GOP margin of victory nearly 8 points right.

·      Trump ’20 – won North Carolina by 1.3% (+74,483) with Democrat registration advantage D+5.3%, a leftward move in the statewide margin despite an above average Republican gain in votes and a strong rightward lurch in voter registration

Analysis like this is what has put me at odds with Michael Whatley, the former NCGOP chairman and now a key cog over at the RNC, for three years now.  Trump barely held a state that gave every indication, including the incumbent vote gain, it was going to go big for him – at least out to my forecasted margin of +9.0%.  That margin represents a smaller rightward shift (5.3%) than the 1996 to 2000 shift when Bush made slightly larger net vote gains than Trump did and is more than three points to the left of Bush’s 2004 margin.  It is most certainly not a case of fairy tale analysis.

My analysis suggests Biden was the beneficiary of roughly 385,788 likely fraudulent ballots in 2020, with Wake (metro Raleigh) and Mecklenburg (metro Charlotte) Counties leading the way by a long shot, but Republican strongholds like Gaston, Union, Davidson, Onslow, and Brunswick concealing many excess ballots amid massive Republican gains.  New Hanover County, on the Atlantic Coast, had backed every GOP presidential nominee since 1980 while sitting on a legacy Democrat voter registration advantage, but went for Biden despite Trump putting out the strongest GOP gain in two decades and the county flipping to a Republican voter registration advantage for the first time ever.  You can’t make this stuff up, but it’s drowned out by the fact that it occurred in the comical 2020 quasi-election, and in a state Trump still managed to win despite every effort to turn its 15 electors (now 16) to Biden.  Once North Carolina couldn’t be delivered for him thanks to Trump’s huge gain, attention was immediately diverted to Georgia, which had even looser absentee rules on the book than North Carolina did.

Looking Forward

Team Biden knows it is toast in Florida and Ohio, and likely by double digits in each.  There is no serious spending for the presidential races in either of those two longstanding national bellwethers, but the incumbent’s campaign is targeting North Carolina.  They realize that Trump, if he holds every state that was certified for him in the corrupt 2020 race, will now have 235 electoral votes thank to census changes that, although still rigged against the GOP, give him a slight boost in the electoral count.  There appears to be no pathway to get Biden a win in Texas in 2024, so North Carolina gets the money.

It doesn’t take an overrated liberal arts degree from UNC Chapel Hill to determine that North Carolina lies along the critical pathway to a Trump victory this year and must be held.  I see no pathway for Trump to win the White House if North Carolina winds up getting snatched, and it is the most likely state to be Georgia’d this year if there is to be such a state.  The good news is, the heist failed in 2020, and things are much worse for the Democrats this time around:

·      Voter registration

·      Voter ID

·      Minority coalition shifting

·      Favorable rules changes

These items are described in greater detail throughout the remainder of this preliminary analysis.

Assessment

July 7, 2024

Polling and Modeling

·      538 expects Trump to carry North Carolina with 67% likelihood as of the time of this writing, and by an average of 3.9%.

·      The Economist forecast has a much more bullish projection for Trump, giving him an 81% chance of winning it, and projecting a 6.3% margin of victory.

·      Poll – June – Spry Strategies – Trump +8%

·      Poll – June – Redfield and Wilton Strategies Research – Trump +3%

·      Poll – June – East Carolina University Center for Survey Research – Trump +5%

·      Poll – June – North Star Opinion Research – Trump +12%

Party Registration Data

·      Statewide

2020 Election: D+5.3% (+391,414 Democrat registration lead)

7/6/2024: D+1.9% (+140,571 Democrat registration lead)

Keshel Forecast

July 7, 2024

Trump +4-6%

In February, I wrote an entire article dedicated to Trump’s outlook in this must-win state entitled, Will Donald Trump Hold North Carolina in 2024? A Captain’s 100-County Overview.  In that study, I found that if Trump’s gains are limited to the gains he made in vote margin in 79 counties in 2020 against the steady wind of election manipulation, and Biden’s gains are equal to those he made in the 21 counties that gave him a more favorable raw vote outcome in 2020 than Clinton had in 2016, then Trump would lose the state by just under 30,000 ballots.

In this scenario, he would backtrack in The Mountains and The Piedmont regions, getting absolutely destroyed in the latter, while making slight gains in The Coastal Plain.  Keep in mind, this represents a worst-case scenario, and considers inputs from a quasi-election (2020) in which mail-in balloting procedures were loosened substantially.

Fortunately for Trump, all indicators are pointing to a much more comfortable win in the 2024 race.  Party registration is one, with Democrats clinging to a steadily receding lead of just 1.9% which is likely to dwindle to within 1% by election time, with 96 counties displaying a Republican lean in this indicator since last time around.  Another is the expectation that Trump will improve significantly with minority voters, particularly blacks and Latinos, who together make up nearly a third of the state’s population and will still most likely be entering this year’s election registered as Democrats if they have chosen a partisan registration entry.  Finally, North Carolina now has at least a minimal form of Voter ID, has avoided Automatic Voter Registration, and has strict timelines for absentee ballot acceptance (a big departure from 2020).

All these things, plus the popular Mark Robinson seeking the Governor’s office, should propel Trump in North Carolina in line with the current modeling and polling.  No Republican presidential nominee has won Florida and lost North Carolina since 1960, and North Carolina has moved in the same direction as Florida, heavily expected to go much further Republican this fall, 15 of 18 times since 1952 (and should have in 2020).  North Carolina looks to be a waste of time and money for Biden or any potential replacement, on the short end by 4 points, and perhaps approaching double digits if the minority coalition shift is big enough and fewer fraud vectors are available to exploit.

This state will put Trump at his “Core 235” electoral vote score that he needs as a steppingstone to reach 270.  Look for Trump comfortably over 3 million votes in North Carolina.

For all 2024 analysis, link to Captain K’s 2024 Electoral College Situation Room.