Trump, Biden tied in NC heading into this month’s nominating conventions
On the eve of their nominations, the major presidential candidates are virtually tied in North Carolina, a state that could be critical to victory this November.
That’s reflected in their ad spending, which already has blanketed TVs and digital screens across the state.
Only in Florida is President Donald Trump spending more than he is in North Carolina, according to Advertising Analytics, a firm that tracks campaign spending. With a competitive U.S. Senate race that could decide which party controls the Senate, the state’s overall political spending is second only to California.
“(North Carolina) is one of the few true tossups,” said Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report. “(It’s) a state that is going to be decided by a very small margin either way.”
Democrat Joe Biden, the former vice president, will be nominated Tuesday in a virtual roll call of delegates at the Democratic National Convention.
Trump will be renominated Aug. 24 by 336 delegates at the Charlotte Convention Center at the Republican National Convention.
Going into the conventions, Real Clear Politics’ polling average shows the candidates essentially tied in North Carolina. An Emerson College poll this week found Trump up 2 points. A poll released Thursday by the conservative Civitas Institute showed Biden up by 1. Both results were well within the margin of error.
“I wouldn’t expect whoever wins North Carolina to win by more than 2-3 points,” said Civitas President Donald Bryson. “Three is even a stretch at this point.”
In 2016 Trump carried the state by nearly 4 points over Democrat Hillary Clinton. This year some analysts say the state, with its 15 electoral votes, is close to a must-win for Trump.
“North Carolina is a large state with a large packet of electoral votes that Donald Trump cannot afford to lose,” said political scientist Larry Sabato, who runs the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“This is a classic state that Joe Biden doesn’t need to win but Donald Trump does. ... If Donald Trump loses North Carolina he may well be losing Georgia and Florida (and) some of the Midwestern states he needs.”
‘Trump’s to lose’
The Trump campaign says it has made 4 million voter contacts in the state, a number equivalent to more than half the state’s registered voters.
“There is no doubt that North Carolina is Trump Country,” said spokesman Gates McGavick. “We’ve built out an expansive field team that’s working around-the-clock to re-elect President Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot.”
They’ve also spent heavily.
Trump’s ad spending in the state, along with TV time the campaign has reserved in the fall, amounts to nearly $29 million, according to Advertising Analytics. Groups such as America First Action Fund are spending an additional $12 million on his behalf.
Biden, on the other hand, has spent about $8 million advertising in North Carolina. Allied groups — including the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans — are spending $7.5 million to help.
Sabato calls North Carolina “Trump’s to lose.” But there could be danger signs for the president.
The Civitas survey found that 70% of North Carolinians say the country is on the “wrong track.” That’s the highest since 2011, a year before President Barack Obama narrowly lost the state that he’d carried four years earlier. The Emerson Poll showed Trump winning rural areas by a large margin but trailing 52%-44% in the suburbs, traditionally havens of support for Republicans.
“College-educated, white independent women are a problem for Republicans,” said Paul Shumaker, a strategist for GOP Sen. Thom Tillis. “It’s not an issue problem. It’s more of an image problem.”
In a memo to Tillis donors, Shumaker said a key to N.C. elections lies with unaffiliated voters, who make up a third of registered voters.
He said while many of those voters still align with one party or the other, four in 10 are “pure swing voters” with no allegiance to either party. Those voters, he wrote, “tend to be fiscally conservative, but socially moderate or liberal. They prefer a compassionate conservative over a firebrand social conservative, and ... a right of center Democrat to the liberal Democrats.”
Bryson, of Civitas, said for many voters the election is simple: It’s about the president.
“Donald Trump is just a controversial person,” Bryson said. “Donald Trump doesn’t just take some of the oxygen out of the room. He takes all of the oxygen out.”
Getting out the vote
L.T. McCrimmon, Biden’s N.C. state director, said the campaign has made 2.5 million voter calls in the last couple months while volunteers are looking for creative ways to engage voters during the pandemic. She said volunteers are “super-energized” by his pick of California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.
Meredith College political scientist Whitney Manzo, assistant director of the Meredith Poll, said, “Having Kamala on the ticket will do more to drive enthusiasm for the ticket among the Black community.”
North Carolina’s African American vote in 2016 was nearly 9 points below what it had been for Barack Obama in 2012, according to the Center for American Progress. Black turnout in 2012 was slightly less than it was in 2008, according to an analysis by Democracy North Carolina.
Manzo said Harris’s candidacy could help among the state’s small but growing Asian population. Harris’s mother was Indian; her father Jamaican. Asians are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the state, according to UNC’s Carolina Demography. Statewide they’re about 3% of the population; their percentage of voters is unclear.
Sabato said Trump, himself, could be unintentionally helping Democrats.
“He’s getting out the Democratic vote,” Sabato said. “He’s doing something that Hillary couldn’t do and Biden probably couldn’t do either. But Trump gets them out.”
Since 1968, North Carolina has generally voted for the Republican presidential candidate. The only two exceptions were in 1976, when it went for Democrat Jimmy Carter, and in 2008, when Obama won by 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million cast.
This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 6:10 AM.
