Summary:
- North Carolina continues its trajectory as a politically purple state
- Political extremism still comes with a cost at the ballot box
- Gerrymandering works – and may be with us for some time to come
Last week, we outlined three big questions that North Carolina’s 2024 general election would help resolve about our state and the direction we’re headed in. Now, the answers – such as they are – are back, so let’s check in on where we stand.
What direction is North Carolina headed in?
The answer: still unclear.
Last week, by a slim margin, North Carolina once again joined the column of pale red states in supporting Donald Trump for the Presidency. At the same time, it also elected Josh Stein as Governor by a historic margin of 15 points – the biggest landslide gubernatorial victory since Jim Hunt’s triumph over I. Beverly Lake in 1980. Democrats also flipped control of the offices of Lt. Governor and the Superintendency of Schools, as well as holding the Attorney General office. They also broke the Republican legislative supermajority in the State House.
In other words, both parties had clear wins and losses in North Carolina’s 2024 election. Republicans once again demonstrated a superior voter turnout program, while Democrats were more adept at picking up independent and moderate voters repelled by more extremist candidates on the Right.
While the nation as a whole appeared to swing towards the GOP by roughly 7 points from 2020 to 2024, the Harris campaign over-performed in the 7 main battleground states, trailing Trump by only 3.1 points across them. Here in North Carolina, the swing was even smaller: a 2-point swing, from 1.4 points for Trump in 2020 to 3.4 in 2024. Part of that is explained by the Harris campaign’s barrage of political ads, which appear to have had a real effect. It could also be partly explained by North Carolina’s infamous political “inelasticity” – except for the immediate counter-example in the Governor’s race.
The price of extremism
Republican primary voters’ choices to nominate Mark Robinson, Dan Bishop, Michelle Morrow and Hal Weatherman for statewide office came at a steep cost this year. Not only did all of these self-avowed far-right candidates lose, but they may have inadvertently assisted Democrats in breaking the Republican legislative supermajority as well. Democratic candidates correctly pointed to each candidate’s pandering to the lunatic fringe as proof that they were a poor choice for leadership, and voters listened. There still appears to be a real electoral price to extremism – as long as opposing candidates have the resources to educate voters about it.
Mark Robinson’s results in the light of his association with Nazism and graphic sexual fantasy can be read in two ways: First, as a counterexample to North Carolina’s presumed political inelasticity. After all, if 15% of voters can still swing in an election with a sufficiently offensive candidate, perhaps they are less politically entrenched than commonly believed.
But on the other hand, after everything, Mark Robinson still got 40% of the statewide vote. Michelle Morrow, who proposed televised public executions of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, got 48.9%. Unlike Robinson, Morrow pivoted aggressively, attempting to market a more palatable and moderate public appearance in the final months of her campaign. This may have had an effect, and given her supporters a plausible “permission structure” to support her tortured candidacy.
Together, Robinson and Morrow may have publicly established the floor of support that Republican statewide candidates can expect in North Carolina, no matter what. If anything, this speaks even more clearly to how deep political polarization has sunk in.
Gerrymandering works – mostly
The 2023 Republican gerrymander of North Carolina’s election maps performed mostly as designed.
All over the state, though most egregiously in New Hanover, Wake and Mecklenburg counties, Republican partisan gerrymandering successfully flipped formerly Democratic seats or protected Republican incumbents. Though Democrats won a majority of votes for the State Senate (50.1%) and State House (51.1%), Republicans nevertheless held on to their supermajority in the former, and are just 1 seat from a supermajority in the latter.
The extremity of gerrymandering in North Carolina’s state legislature is so great that it’s effectively useless for gauging actual partisan popularity among voters at large. Voters did not choose Republicans to run their state legislature – Republicans chose the voters who would support them. Even so, they demonstrated that fundamental voter preferences are such that drawing a safe Republican supermajority is no longer possible in North Carolina.
The road ahead
North Carolina is headed back into divided government. Though Governor-elect Josh Stein’s veto will now hang on a single vote in the State House, that alone will significantly change Republicans’ legislative strategy. Republicans may still get most of what they want out of the legislature, but there is now once again a check on their power. Though partisan gerrymandering has mostly choked it into a squeak, the voice of the people still has some sway.
