In last week's once-in-a-lifetime Democratic presidential primary in North Carolina, with repeated visits by the candidates and Bill Clinton to cities and towns that had never seen a presidential candidate, let alone a former president, turnout was heavy -- 36 percent, twice the norm for primaries.

And it seems Sen. Barack Obama put together a remarkable coalition that included at least some working-class, blue-collar whites, as well as an overwhelming number of African-Americans and young people. If Obama can build on this trend, I wonder whether the likely Democratic presidential nominee might actually win North Carolina in the fall. It would be the first Democratic victory here since Jimmy Carter won in 1976 (Bill Clinton came within a percentage point in 1992).

Examining returns in Chatham County, where I live, offers some insights on the micro level. Chatham is a swing county, without the large voting blocs that typically put Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton over the top in other counties.

Echoing Obama's near-landslide across North Carolina, Chatham gave him 57 percent of the Democratic primary vote -- 8,712 votes, compared with 6,175 for Clinton, or 40 percent.

Together, Obama and Clinton garnered more than 14,800 votes in Chatham -- nearly 2,000 more than the Republican presidential candidate received in the 2004 general election.

Just five votes separated John Kerry and George W. Bush in Chatham in 2004 -- 12,997 for Kerry/Edwards compared with 12,992 for Bush/Cheney, with 18 for Ralph Nader. That was a poor showing for the Democrats, especially considering that vice presidential running mate John Edwards was North Carolina's senior senator and had visited the county on many occasions.

Trying to explain away his poor performance, Edwards claimed that Kerry's campaign refused to invest resources in North Carolina. Maybe. But come November 2008, the Democratic nominee will not be able to claim that the Democratic message did not get through to North Carolina voters. Tens of thousands of residents attended rallies and events, heard directly from the presidential candidates themselves, or their surrogates, and millions of voters heard from the candidates through the media.

If the Democrats can keep their coalition of 1.5 million primary voters together and win a substantial number of unaffiliated voters -- not even a majority -- who tend not to vote in primaries, they should have no problem beating McCain easily in Chatham, and they could even win North Carolina.

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TO DO SO, DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE TO DEFY HISTORIC PATTERNS -- Bush won this state with 56 percent of the vote in 2000 and 2004. North Carolina went for Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. You have to go back to 1964 -- the year of Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory against Barry Goldwater -- to think of North Carolina as part of the "Solid South" that almost always voted Democratic.

True, early exit polls indicated that 40 percent of Clinton voters may vote for McCain instead of Obama in the fall. But exit polls during primaries are notoriously unreliable, as James Stimson, a professor of political science at UNC-Chapel Hill, pointed out in a public radio interview. He also noted that party affiliation is still the best predictor of voting: two-thirds of voters are party loyalists. And there are currently 2.6 million registered Democrats in North Carolina, compared with 1.9 million registered Republicans, and 1.2 million unaffiliated voters.

With the state's new one-stop early voting law, turnout in the November election is likely to increase substantially over 2004, possibly by as much as 30 percent. Nearly 190,000 new voters registered here between January and May, according to the State Board of Elections.

My barber in Chatham County, a white man close to retirement, was singing Obama's praises Wednesday, comparing him to John F. Kennedy. He's a man who speaks eloquently, especially to young people, he said.

My barber is clearly a member of the white working class that media pundits have been telling us won't vote for Obama. But he said he can't stand the Clintons or the Bushes and would like the country to make a fresh start. He'd like a president who makes the wealthy pay their fair share and who preaches personal responsibility to all.

Obama may be the man, he said, though he worries that Obama doesn't have enough experience in this dangerous world of terrorist plots.

My barber, I bet, is a swing voter. People like him may determine the outcome of the November election, not only in Chatham County but the nation as well. I'll keep going back to him for doses of political reality that I don't get from the media pundits.

(Jim Buie is a writer, editor and webmaster based in Fearrington Village. He blogs at www.jimbuie.net.)

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