Will Donald Trump Hold North Carolina in 2024? A Captain's 100-County Overview

Topic: Elections

In last week’s article detailing the battle for Texas in this year’s fast-approaching election, the Lone Star state was described along with two other 2020 Trump-won (certified wins) states – Alaska and North Carolina – as being must holds.  Alaska will certainly be held by Trump, even though uncertainty looms on the horizon thanks to the GOP’s self-inflicted wounds in cementing dangerous election practices, and Texas, while taking on a major headwind, appears to be tuning up the band to drop 40 electors in the Trump column, backing the 45^th, and hopefully 47^th, President for the third successive election.

To recap: Democrats don’t (yet) have the ballots to get it done in Texas, and if the Hispanic Republican surge takes root in the urban centers, the blue plague may be pushed out to the Gulf of Mexico for good – indeed, that is the only thing that will stop Texas from its eventual urbanization-driven demise into blue statehood.  Alaska, being won by the largest percentage of the three states in the “pink slate” required to get President Trump to the base camp of 235 electoral votes, is too much of a lift, and not a believable steal either historically (not Democrat won since 1964) nor on the issues.  That, by matter of deduction, leaves North Carolina as the Trump 2020 state most likely to be Georgia’d.

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Georgia’d (verb)

jor-juhd

To lose unexpectedly and illegitimately something widely believed to belong to that person or his or her organization, especially to a pudding-brained political retread who didn’t campaign in a state his party hadn’t won in almost three decades.

Usage: Jeff thought Tiffany was happy in their relationship and began spending more time barhopping with his friends on the weekends, even forgetting her birthday on one occasion.  This all changed when he saw Tiffany with his coworker, Harry, at a new bar after midnight last weekend.  Tiffany was tired of being taken for granted and was Georgia’d by Harry.

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I have opined at great length about what appears to be a staggering number of fraudulent Biden votes in North Carolina’s 2020 presidential quasi-election – 385,788 by my count, which would have yielded a victory for President Trump of 9.0%, or 460,271 votes, in margin, rather than the paltry 1.3% (74,483 votes) the state wound up certifying.  In fact, while President Trump was still in office, I was screaming from the rooftops for a selective audit to occur there – in a state he won “narrowly” – just to show how thick the ballots were piled on even in states the Democrats couldn’t rip off.  On that note, the failure to rip off North Carolina, Florida, or Texas required Georgia to be diverted for Biden once the great vote-counting pause commenced.

Biden’s campaign realizes Florida will be redder in 2024 than it has been in any election since 1988, and they will only give lip service to “blue Texas” to keep the fire alive for down-ballot candidates, who unfortunately are picking up steam as conservatives move further out into the sticks.  Ohio and Iowa are long gone out in flyover country, but don’t lose sight of where they are setting their sights – North Carolina.  He’d be stupid not to, after hardly a single elected Republican in North Carolina wanted to get involved with the election integrity monster, because after all – “Trump won it!”  Bear with me:

2008 Obama +0.3%

2012 Romney +2.0%

2016 Trump +3.7%

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2020 Trump +1.3%

Romney flipped North Carolina back to the Republican column in an otherwise dismal campaign, and Trump extended that margin four years later with a net gain of just 92,236 votes.  In 2020, Trump gained 396,144 net new votes, only to barely hold the state, losing 2.4% off his previous margin of victory, thanks to mail-in anarchy.  What the certified results don’t show you is that in Trump’s term, North Carolina had a four-point Republican trend in voter registration, with Democrats in the rapidly growing state incredibly losing more than 100,000 net registrations between the 2016 and 2020 elections.  93 of North Carolina’s 100 counties moved toward the President’s party during his term, only for Biden to finish 321,661 votes ahead of Trump’s 2016 winning total.  Trump ran ahead of the cheat.

And here we are – with Joe Biden looking to capitalize on the corruption and inaction in the old South.  Another swing in margin just like the 2020 number would put the state in Joe Biden’s column by a measly 1.1%.  That cannot be allowed to happen – as I do not see a path to 270 electoral votes without North Carolina’s 16 (up one from last election thanks to census adjustments).

Can Donald Trump hold North Carolina, or is North Carolina at risk of being Georgia’d?

North Carolina recognizes three physical regions within which I will present my data.  They are Mountains, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain, from west to east.

Trump won counties in green by more votes in 2020 than in 2016, or lost them by fewer; Trump won counties in red by fewer votes in 2020 than in 2016, or lost them by more.

Mountains – 23 counties, in the stubbornly conservative Appalachian region of North Carolina; unfortunately, the region, despite having 18 of 23 counties favorable to Trump, is dominated by the liberal bastion of Asheville, located in Buncombe County, where Trump lost by an additional 14,400 in 2020 (most of which appears to be fraudulent).

Piedmont – 36 counties, the dominant population region of the state housing 7 of the top 10 counties by population. Piedmont contains metro Charlotte and the Research Triangle, which is anchored by university influenced counties like Wake (containing metro Raleigh), Durham, and Orange.  This region’s growth is the driving force behind North Carolina’s move into competitive status since 2004.  26 of 36 counties are favorable to Trump, but the 10 that aren’t deliver devastating margins for Democrats.

Coastal Plain – 41 counties, dominated by Republican strength in the southeast, despite the fraudulent loss of New Hanover County in the 2020 presidential election.  Only 6 counties are favorable to Democrats even accepting 2020 trends as legitimate, but margins for Trump were clearly manipulated into being shortened throughout the region.

Now, where does this lead us?

Referencing the green and pink map above the regional descriptions, you will find that President Trump had better outcomes in terms of final net vote margin (whether in victory or defeat) in 79 of the state’s 100 counties.  Of the 21 in which President Trump suffered a greater defeat or tighter margin of victory (in terms of raw votes):

·      6 represent negligible numbers (Jackson, Transylvania, Union, Nash, Hoke, Craven) at 750 votes in margin lost or fewer.

·      7 represent intermediate margin loss between 1,600 and 4,100 votes – Henderson, Watauga, Alamance, Orange, Chatham, Cumberland, and Pitt.

·      6 represent severe margin loss between 7,200 and 19,300 votes – Cabarrus, Forsyth, Guilford, Durham, New Hanover, and Buncombe.

·      2 represent catastrophic margin loss between at 59,900 and 60,400 votes, respectively – Mecklenburg and Wake Counties.

For this exercise, I am extending the losses in margin for each of the 21 counties above into 2024, even though I think Trump will make it difficult to run up the score in Mecklenburg County (metro Charlotte) thanks to gains with black voters, and statewide with Latino voters – with gains in white liberal dominated Buncombe County (Asheville) and the Research Triangle and its rotten, left-wing university heavy electorate the most unlikely for obvious reasons.  Consider this a worst-case scenario.

For counties in green, I am extending the trend – take for example, Burke County in the Mountains region, where I am assessing a gain of 3,000 more votes in margin of victory for Trump in 2024:

2004 Margin (Bush): 7,194

2008 Margin (McCain): 7,201 (+7)

2012 Margin (Romney): 8,566 (+1,365)

2016 Margin (Trump 1.0): 14,987 (+6,421)

2020 Margin (Trump 2.0): 17,901 (+2,914)

Burke County, even when North Carolina has moved left, has given larger Republican vote margins in every election since 1992, when H. Ross Perot put a temporary halt to that trend.  Notably, I have concurrently estimated that Burke likely contains a minimum of 3,118 fictitious Biden votes in the last election, which prevented Trump’s pickups in margin from resembling his own in 2016.  My assessment is an increase in margin of 3,000 for Burke County.

Here is my assessment for the remaining 99 counties, split up by region: