How the 2020 Presidential Candidates are trying to win NC's swing state electoral votes
North Carolina’s electoral results by county from the 2016 Presidential Election. Over the three elections prior to 2020, no candidate has won more than 51% of the NC vote, making North Carolina and its 15 electoral college votes a key swing state. Source.
North Carolina has historically been a swing state—the levels of support for the Democratic and Republican party are incredibly close, and it will be crucial in the upcoming 2020 election. In the upcoming weeks before the election, it is important to understand the previous voting patterns of North Carolina, as well as the campaigning strategies that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are undertaking.
In the 2016 election, Donald Trump won 50.5% of votes in North Carolina, while Hillary Clinton won 46.7% and Gary Johnson won 2.8%. Although the largest seven counties had a majority vote for Clinton, a majority of the counties overall had a majority vote for Donald Trump. In the 2012 election, the voting patterns were similar—Mitt Romney had won 50.6% of the vote, while Barack Obama had won 48.4%, mostly due to large counties such as Mecklenburg, Wake, and Guilford. 2008 was the first year in which a Democratic candidate had won the state in 32 years. Barack Obama barely won, with 49.9% of the vote. North Carolina’s vote has proven to always be extremely close; in the past three elections, the winning candidate has never gotten more than 51% of the vote.
Joe Biden recently visited Charlotte on September 23, which marks his first visit to North Carolina since February. The Charlotte Observer describes his campaigning strategy as very different from President Donald Trump’s; Biden is focusing on holding socially distanced and virtual events. He also chooses to have volunteers call houses instead of going to houses in person. The Biden campaign is also focusing on the Black vote, and wants to increase Black voter turnout, since Black voters make up nearly 25% of all registered voters in North Carolina. In the 2016 election, 40% of N.C. Democrats stayed home, and targeting the population that didn’t vote may be the key to a Biden victory.
Donald Trump is also targeting nonvoters and is planning to identify and register them for the upcoming election. In contrast to Democrats, only 24% of registered Republicans in North Carolina did not vote in the 2016 election, so it may be harder for the Trump campaign to identify new voters. However, Republican registrations during the summer were slightly higher than Democratic registrations, with 70,407 new Republican voters, 67,087 new Demoratic voters, and 90,754 unaffiliated voters. This increase in registrations may prove to be an advantage for Trump.
The overall strategy for this election seems to be incentivizing new people to vote; for those who already vote regularly and are quite involved, campaigning will likely not drastically change their mind. However, even though the United States is extremely polarized, there is a “silent majority” that is not as involved as politics and loyal to one particular party. This group of people is instrumental in ensuring one candidate’s win over another. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump seem to be targeting this part of the population, who may prove instrumental to winning the 15 electoral votes from North Carolina.