Trump vs. Harris: North Carolina

There are 16 electoral votes at stake in the state, areas still reeling from Helene

Helene’s Wrath

A month after flooding from what was then Tropical Storm Helene, many parts of western North Carolina are nowhere near back to normal. Roads were washed away. Tens of thousands of people still don’t have power. It was a terrible storm, killing 95 people in North Carolina alone.

And yet, there’s an election next week and early voting is underway. I won’t rehash the arguments. Some people claim politicians are slow to approve alternate voting sites and other people claim there are no issues and an emergency declaration to ensure there are enough early voting centers open has record numbers of people voting.

We’ll know at the end of the day, when the votes are counted and we can compare turnout numbers.

In 2020, Donald Trump won North Carolina by 74,483 out of 5,524,804 votes cast. That’s 49.9% to 48.6%, one of the truly close races in the last election.

There are 13 counties in western North Carolina particularly hard hit by Helene. About 447,000 people in those counties voted in 2020, and they provided Trump with a margin of 43,000 votes. You can understand why this is a sensitive issue.

The largest city in this area is Asheville, in Buncombe County, one of the two counties in this area that supported Biden. The other counties supported Trump by margins ranging from 16 to 58 points.

Recent Polling

The Real Clear Politics average for North Carolina shows Trump ahead by 0.8 points, hardly worth calling an advantage. The 538 aggregate has Trump up by 1.3 points, the highest in months, but still pretty much tied.

Going into the election in 2020, Biden led Trump by about 1 point, and going into 2016, Hillary Clinton led Trump by about 2 1/2 points. Trump beat Clinton by 3.6% in 2016, marking one of the bigger poll misses in the country.

Still, I’d caution against making conclusions based on so few data points. The average poll miss in general is about 75% of the margin of error assuming a representative sampling. That’s about three points even under ideal circumstances.

North Carolina is Very Much in Play

My model right now has Trump winning North Carolina, 50.5% to 48.0%, or a margin of 153,000 votes. I see Kamala Harris gaining an advantage of 208,000 votes in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), 178,000 votes in Wake County (Raleigh), 116,000 votes in Durham County (Durham) with an astonishing 80% of the vote, 66,000 votes in Guilford County (Greensboro) and 44,000 votes in Orange County (Chapel Hill).

But there are 100 counties in North Carolina and I think 77 of them will support Trump. Moreover, of those five big voting prizes, only Raleigh has upped its voter registration by more than the state average of 7.9% since 2020.

On the Republican side, only Randolph County (+45,000 votes) and Davidson County (+46,000 votes and not the home of Davidson College, though the college is only two miles from a Trump National Golf Club) have an impact even comparable to Orange County. But 33 counties are projected to add 10,000 or more votes to Trump’s margin, as opposed to eight for Harris.

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