In battleground North Carolina, Helene damage creates challenges for Trump and Harris

Western North Carolina damage from Hurricane Helene may shake up the presidential election in the critical battleground state, which could have national implications, state politics experts say.

State officials have confirmed more than 50 deaths in North Carolina, a number that’s expected to rise, and President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in 25 counties. Hundreds of thousands were still without power as of Tuesday as power crews, the North Carolina National Guard and other relief workers tried to reach areas cut off by impassable roads.

The general public is more focused on helping others and surviving in Helene-devastated communities than a race where state polls show Republican former President Donald Trump leading Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by less than one percentage point, experts say.

“It’s just not a priority right now,” said Susan Roberts, a political science professor at Davidson College.

But a drop in turnout due to the storm could swing the presidential race.

“It affects so many people that it will certainly have an effect on the election,” said Eric Heberlig, a political science professor at UNC Charlotte. “... Those small changes in turnout could very much make a difference in who wins and who loses.”

Voter demographics in Western NC

Trump in 2020 won 23 of the 25 counties now included in the federal disaster declaration for Helene, most of them by double digits, on his way to a narrow victory in North Carolina. Biden carried just two — Buncombe County, home to Asheville, and Watauga County, which includes the town of Boone.

The heavy Republican lean in the western portion of the state is a cause for concern for the Trump campaign, Heberlig said.

“If this damage significantly depresses turnout in most areas out there, that’s more likely to have an impact on the Republicans than the Democrats,” he said.

The population differences between many of those rural, red counties and more liberal population centers such as Asheville complicates the electoral math, Heberlig added.

“You can have a 10% drop in turnout in many of the rural counties, but a 10% drop in Asheville has a lot larger numerical impact, just because it has many more people,” Heberlig said.

Roberts said the situation probably doesn’t give Harris a chance to pick up many votes in the affected areas, but she could benefit from lower turnout in rural areas.

“The rural vote has been decidedly for former President Trump … Should Trump lose North Carolina by 1% or less than 1%, then it’s all going to come back to, were there free and fair elections in Western North Carolina?” she said.

Shaking up campaigning and election planning

The devastation in Western North Carolina is so severe people may struggle to cast their ballots, even if state officials give voters and election boards flexibility, Roberts predicted.

“It’s not all going to be solved by making exceptions for absentee ballots,” she said.

Election officials face a short window, with Election Day on Nov. 5 and early voting scheduled to start even sooner, to address disruptions to the postal service, destruction of polling places and voters with missing or damaged IDs.

“It’s a huge logistical feat to put on an election under normal conditions, let alone under these,” Heberlig said.

The campaigns will also have to adjust their strategies, he added.

“Any kind of grassroots door-knocking or mobilization activities that were planned in those counties, those plans are severely disrupted,” Heberlig said.

A likely point of emphasis for both campaigns, according to Heberlig: finding ways to reach affected voters and educate them about their options for casting ballots.

Both campaigns also have to be careful to avoid creating a backlash by appearing insensitive to the loss of life and property in their next moves, Roberts said. That means not getting in the way of emergency response and avoiding a lot of negative messaging, she said.

“The last several weeks prior to an election is when you see more of a deluge, if you will, of negative ads. Would that be the wise choice for the Asheville media market now? I’m not sure that it would,” she said.

Will Helene impact NC election results?

In addition to Republicans and Democrats’ turning out their respective bases in Western North Carolina, there’s also the question of how unaffiliated voters — North Carolina’s largest affiliation — will react to the storm, Roberts said.

“The natural disaster may mean that those people just won’t show up to the polls … It might be too inconvenient,” Roberts said.

In a state where unaffiliated voters are critical to winning elections, a natural disaster can be a real blow to turnout, Heberlig said.

“People who are marginally interested in politics anyway are hard to turn out, but when you have a home and family to worry about, that’s obviously going to take precedence,” he said. “So for lots of people, worrying about the election is going to be No. 47 on the list of things that they want to worry about.”

More could happen to change the dynamics of the presidential race in the last month of the campaign, but Heberlig predicts Helene’s aftermath “is big enough” to “certainly affect turnout.”

“Our statewide races tend to be so close that just about anything can swing it one way or another,” he said.

This story was originally published October 2, 2024 at 6:00 AM.

Mary Ramsey

The Charlotte Observer

Mary Ramsey is the local government accountability reporter for The Charlotte Observer. A native of the Carolinas, she studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and has also worked in Phoenix, Arizona and Louisville, Kentucky. Support my work with a digital subscription