Yes, Democrats, North Carolina is worth the fight

A couple weeks ago, the New York Times/Sienna poll of battleground states put fear into the hearts of Democrats because it showed Biden trailing Trump in every state except Wisconsin. The poll scared me because North Carolina was not included. Despite consistently being one the most closely contested states in federal elections, national reporters and pundits seem to be writing it off. I hope national Democrats aren’t following suit.

After years of near misses, a lot of political observers seem to have lost faith that North Carolina is really a swing state. They’re wrong. In 2020, North Carolina was the closest state that Biden lost. He improved on Hillary Clinton’s margin by two points and won the largest, fastest growing counties by larger margins. Cal Cunningham would have almost certainly beaten incumbent Republican Senator Thom Tillis if he had been able to keep pants zipped, at least that’s what Tillis’ pollster believes.

In 2022, skittish Democrats held back in North Carolina. They had an open seat race between Ted Budd and Cherie Beasley and spent less here than in any battleground state. They probably missed an opportunity to add to their majority.

According to a presentation by Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson, Democrats won last year in every state where they outspent Republicans. In North Carolina, the GOP spent $26 million more to elect Budd than Democrats spent on Beasley. The total amount spent between progressive third parties and the Beasley campaign was $68 million. While that seems like a lot, Democrats spent $129 million in Arizona, a state with 3 million fewer people than North Carolina. In other words, Democrats spent $98 per vote in Arizona and only $38 per vote in North Carolina. You get what you pay for.

As Jackson pointed out, the cost discrepancy had real consequences. Democrats never defined Budd. Voters didn’t know he was an election denier who voted against certifying the election. They didn’t know he called the January 6 rioters “patriots.” They didn’t know he supports a ban on abortion, the issue that led Democrats to victory just two weeks ago.

Beasley was left with the task of both introducing herself to the voters and defining Budd. She didn’t have the funds or the support to make her case. In real terms, she got hung out to dry.

The state also lacked the money to fund a substantial ground operation. They did not have the boots on the ground and, without a message defining Budd, they didn’t have the motivating factor to move voters into the polls. Turnout was down from 2018, when Trump was the catalyst, among younger voters and African Americans, Democrats’ most important constituencies in North Carolina.

National Democrats will argue that they lacked the resources, but I think they lacked faith in Beasley as a candidate and North Carolina as a state. In a world where we spend more than a billion dollars each election cycle, I don’t really believe in a shortage of funds. I think they left a Senate seat on the table because they didn’t believe it was possible.

With their success in 2022, Democrats have had a tendency to overlook their mistakes—or at least their missed opportunities. They need to recognize their oversight so they don’t do it again. The next presidential election is too important to ignore North Carolina.

Despite their struggles picking up Senate seats or electoral votes, North Carolina is still trending blue, even though it’s a sharply divide state. Rural and exurban counties are trending increasingly Republican while urban and suburban counties are becoming more Democratic. The vast majority of Republican counties are losing population, while the Democratic counties are the largest in the state and growing rapidly while increasing the party’s vote share.

According to Jackson, 72% of new registrations since 2016 are in counties that voted more Democratic. Only 28% are in counties that voted more Republican. In addition, in 2020, Republicans, non-college educated White voters, and rural/exurban counties had their highest turnout in history, yet saw Trump’s vote share decrease by two points. In other words, even as Republicans vote more, their margins are shrinking.

Democrats, though, need to keep up. They lost 2022 because of depressed turnout among the base. A CNN exit poll showed Beasley won self-identified independents by six points and moderates by a whopping 32 points. The middle in North Carolina is with the Democrats. The party needs to motivate their base, especially young voters and African Americans.

This year, Democrats in the state are still optimistic, despite the 2022 midterms and a brutal legislative session that highlights the anti-democratic core of the Republican agenda. The new state party chair, Anderson Clayton, is a dynamic leader who is focused on increasing turnout among the base while narrowing the GOP edge in rural areas. The elections two weeks ago indicate she’s having an impact as Democrats made progress in local races in both small towns and big cities. The party still has plenty of fight in it.

National Democrats need to lean into North Carolina. Despite frustrating results in recent years, the state is following Georgia and Virginia, even if it’s lagging a bit. The state has a substantial number of electoral votes and will have Senate seats up in both 2026 and 2028, years when the maps are tough for Democrats. The national party and its allies need to invest in an infrastructure for the long haul, not just one election cycle. They shouldn’t sleep on North Carolina again.