In NC, Trump stirred his base, but the outcome left the state’s direction undecided
President Donald Trump saw North Carolina as a key to his re-election. He wanted the Republican National Convention held in Charlotte. The pandemic made that impossible, but he barnstormed the state with mostly maskless rallies combined with multiple visits by Vice President Mike Pence and Trump family members.
It worked. Trump won the state and the energy he brought helped Republicans to sweep statewide judicial races, win the lieutenant governor’s race, take three contested congressional races and increase their numbers in the state House.
Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said, “We certainly saw the continuation of the nationalization of state and local politics – there’s no doubt that Donald Trump raised all Republican boats.”
Wayne Goodwin, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, surveyed his party’s losses and saw the power of Trump and Trumpism. “A very hyper-partisan presidential race decided a lot of these races down ballot,” he said.
That power drew on not just the political divide, but a split between Democrats and Republicans over how to practice politics in a pandemic. Democrat Joe Biden observed social distancing, while Trump stressed not letting COVID change his campaigning despite the risks of spreading infections.
“Once Trump began rallies not withstanding the pandemic, he fed a hunger Republicans had for that red-meat politics,” Goodwin said. “If he had not been able to hold his rallies, he may not have stoked the passions he got in the final weeks.”
There’s a difference between Trump winning North Carolina and the Republican Party winning it. This was visceral vote both for Trump’s combative, unconventional style and against Democrat-backed shutdowns, mask mandates and other measures that slowed the economy and some saw as intrusive on personal freedom. It was not a rousing endorsement of the Republican agenda in the state legislature. If that were the case, it’s unlikely that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, an advocate for Medicaid expansion, a repeal of corporate tax cuts and the elimination of school vouchers, would have won re-election.
The winning vote was an endorsement of Trump as a defier of political correctness and a denier of the restraints needed to contain the pandemic. It was about personality, not policy. The Trump campaign didn’t bother with a platform and he was silent on what he wanted to do in a second term. His appeal is based on grievance not goals. He is about pushing back, not forward.
Amid the Republican celebration, it’s important also to see the limits of Trump’s success in North Carolina. His narrow North Carolina win appeared larger because of the expectations raised by polls that showed Biden ahead and Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham leading Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
David McLennan, a Meredith College political science professor and director of the Meredith Poll, said pollsters may have focused too much on North Carolina’s shifting demographics and too little on its traditional Republican base.
“The major error for the polls was overestimating the turnout of Democratic-leaning demographic groups like young people and minority voters,” he said. “At the same time, we continued to underestimate the turnout of rural voters.”
Trump won North Carolina by wooing North Carolinians. But it is a victory without direction. It leaves the state where it was, a government divided between the legislature and the governor, the underachieving Tillis going back to the Senate for six more years and another drawn-out fight over redistricting looming next year.
Beyond the stasis, there was one bit of good news. Turnout among both Republicans and Democrats set records. So long as people engage in democracy there’s hope that the will of North Carolina – rather than a fixation with a rudderless president – may yet decide the state’s future course.