Why Harris’ Odds Of Flipping North Carolina Have Become More Likely

The News Guy

4 months ago

Topline

Vice President Kamala Harris could become only the second Democratic presidential candidate to win North Carolina in more than 40 years as the state has slowly shifted more to the left over the past decade—thanks in part to a growing high-tech corridor.

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a Labor Day event at … [+] Northwestern High School in Detroit, Michigan, September 2, 2024. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

Polls show former President Donald Trump and Harris in a virtual tie, with Trump beating her by only a 0.4-point margin in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average and by 0.6 points in RealClearPolitics’ polling average, with a recent Emerson College poll showing Harris trailing by one, and two Morning Consult polls taken last month showing them tied.

The Cook Political Report moved North Carolina from “lean Republican” to a “toss up” last week, writing that the state “looks more competitive than ever” since Harris’ entrance into the race, and the Cook Political Report Swing State Project survey taken in late July/early August shows Harris leading Trump by one point, 48% to 47%, after Biden trailed Trump by seven points, 41% to 48%, in the Cook survey taken in May.

If Harris wins the state, she has a 96.7% chance of winning the election, according to political analyst Nate Silver’s Voter Power Index, which found Trump would have a 76.6% chance of winning the electoral college if he wins North Carolina.

Harris has a 38.5% chance of winning North Carolina, similar to her odds in Georgia (37.4%), and there’s an 86% chance the states will vote together, according to Silver’s model, which considers various demographic characteristics, including age, income, race and education level and the states’ voting history in the past two elections.

North Carolina’s shift to the left has largely been credited to a population increase among potential voters who typically back Democrats—including the highly educated—especially from a 5.6% increase since 2020 near the “research triangle” area of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, according to the Brookings Institution.

That area hosts three major research universities—Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina University—that have also sparked related industries in high tech and the life sciences, and made it the tenth-fastest growing area in the country, according to Brookings.

And the overall percentage of North Carolinians with a bachelor’s degree—a Democratic-leaning demographic—has also increased by 1.4 million since 1990, according to a study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Big Number

16. That’s how many electoral college votes North Carolina has, after gaining a vote after the 2020 census. The state has the eighth most electoral votes in the country, tied with Georgia.

Surprising Fact

North Carolina has only voted for one Democratic presidential candidate since 1980: Barack Obama in 2008.

Key Background

Harris holds an advantage over Trump in almost all of the seven battleground states, according to a recent Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey, the latest to show she has essentially erased Trump’s lead over President Joe Biden in the must-win states. Overall, she leads by two percentage points across the seven states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and she either leads Trump or is tied with him in each of them, the poll found. Harris has also pulled ahead of Trump in most recent national surveys and now leads him by 1.8 points overall, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average. Biden won six of the seven states, with the exception of North Carolina in 2020, solidifying his win.