North Carolina in 2008 was simply something that was not supposed to happen. Four years earlier, in 2004, the state voted for President George W. Bush over Sen. John Kerry by almost 13 points--despite Sen. Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards, hailing from the town of Robbins, in Moore County. In 2007, incumbent Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole was expected to win re-election comfortably over her Democratic challenger, state senator Kay Hagan, and the state was not expected to go to Sen. Obama--if it did, it was said, it would just be icing on the cake.
As it turns out, it was: Sen. Obama didn't really need North Carolina's 15 electoral when he had 350 more. On the other hand, Hagan's surprise victory, below, was no mere icing; her vote proved invaluable in obtaining the 60-seat supermajority required for the Senate to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2009.
As it turns out, it was: Sen. Obama didn't really need North Carolina's 15 electoral when he had 350 more. On the other hand, Hagan's surprise victory, below, was no mere icing; her vote proved invaluable in obtaining the 60-seat supermajority required for the Senate to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2009.
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| 2008 North Carolina Senate election by county and margin. |
Meanwhile, Republicans, especially Sen. Dole, were left scratching their heads. The Tar Heel State used to be solidly red, so much so that no Democrat until 2008 had won it since native Southerner Jimmy Carter won it in 1976. Sen. Dole's seat had not elected a Democrat since 1966.
However, starting in 2008 and continuing through to today, North Carolina made an extremely sharp turn toward the Democratic Party. In 1996, 2000, and 2004 (Ross Perot screws up the trend in 1992) the state voted about 13 or 14 points more Republican than the rest of the nation in presidential elections. In both of President Obama's elections, that number was more like 5 or 6 points, which allowed him to win the state by just over 14,000 votes in 2008. The reason Sen. Obama and Sen. Hagan were able to win what used to be such a solidly red state in 2008 was in large part due to the rapid growth of the cities. Here's a .gif showing the change in population density between 1970 and 2000:
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| North Carolina population growth, 1970 - 2000. Maps from LearnNC. |
The state as a whole turns darker, of course, but the most throttling growth is in Wake County, which contains the capital, Raleigh, and in Mecklenburg County and the surrounding counties, which constitute the Charlotte metropolitan area. In particular, Charlotte has become a Democratic stronghold--Hagan won Mecklenburg County by over 26 percentage points--because of the growth of its minority population. In 1970, whites constituted almost 70% of Charlotte's population; today that number has dropped to 45%. Meanwhile, African-Americans grew from 30% of the city's population to about 35%, but the most explosive growth has been in the Hispanic community, where immigration has increased the proportion of Hispanics in the city from more or less zero in 1970 to over 13% today.
Despite the growth, though, 2008's victory appears to have been an anomaly for Democrats: Gov. Romney won the state (albeit only by two percentage points) in 2012 because North Carolina is still largely a rural state. The state's six largest counties, which Hagan won by large margins, compose only 35% of the electorate. As a result, simply carrying the cities is not enough to overcome large losses in the suburbs and rural areas as it is in, say, Alaska. The 2008 election map above is somewhat misleading: while Hagan's performance in the cities gives the impression that she won in a landslide, the remaining counties she won, especially in the northeast, are sparsely populated and heavily African-American. Sen. Dole won the largely white rural counties of Appalachia in the west and performed well enough in the Charlotte suburbs to match Hagan's performance in the city itself. So we should really qualify our first statement: North Carolina in 2008 was not something that was supposed to happen... yet. 2012 was more a reversion to the mean than a bucking of a new trend. However, at current population trends, where the cities begin to take up a larger and larger portion of the electorate, Tar Heel Democrats should begin to have an easier time.
Repeating 2008?
Putting Barack Obama on the presidential ballot worked in North Carolina in 2008 because African-Americans made up 21% of the population. Obama's charisma and campaign team were extremely successful at turning out black voters: from 2004 to 2008 black turnout increased by almost 5 points from 60% to 65%, compared to a 1-point drop in white turnout from 67% to 66%. The trend continued in 2012, when black turnout surpassed white turnout. The black vote--of which 96% went to Hagan in 2008--was invaluable to her victory, especially when she performed so poorly with whites (Sen. Dole won whites 57-35). Their strong turnout in the cities contributed hugely to her margin of victory.
So there's good news and bad news for Sen. Hagan. The good news is that as it turns out, African-American turnout didn't show much of a dip in North Carolina from 2008 to 2010, so we don't really have much reason to think it'll drop that much from 2012 to 2014. The bad news is that that means there's no "easy" reason for her poor polling--it can't be solved by turning out more black voters. In other words, she's polling poorly because people don't like her. Right now, there's not much she can do besides pray that the Affordable Care Act that she was so instrumental in passing becomes less unpopular by November and hoping that the GOP doesn't nominate a strong candidate.
Not that that's such a far-fetched hope. There's no front runner in the Republican primary, and while Speaker of the House Thom Tillis just barely edges out the rest of the pack in most polling, he's actually less popular (but less well-known) than Hagan, with a net disapproval rating of 19% compared to Hagan's 7%. If Speaker Tillis is the nominee, it's possible that his unpopular tenure running an unpopular legislature that passed an unpopular voter ID law could trigger higher turnout among the minorities and students whose votes Sen. Hagan could really use. Or maybe that's the ultra-optimistic view for Democrats, and it'll actually follow the trends that especially bad midterm years tend to follow. Who knows at this point? TOSS-UP
Putting Barack Obama on the presidential ballot worked in North Carolina in 2008 because African-Americans made up 21% of the population. Obama's charisma and campaign team were extremely successful at turning out black voters: from 2004 to 2008 black turnout increased by almost 5 points from 60% to 65%, compared to a 1-point drop in white turnout from 67% to 66%. The trend continued in 2012, when black turnout surpassed white turnout. The black vote--of which 96% went to Hagan in 2008--was invaluable to her victory, especially when she performed so poorly with whites (Sen. Dole won whites 57-35). Their strong turnout in the cities contributed hugely to her margin of victory.
So there's good news and bad news for Sen. Hagan. The good news is that as it turns out, African-American turnout didn't show much of a dip in North Carolina from 2008 to 2010, so we don't really have much reason to think it'll drop that much from 2012 to 2014. The bad news is that that means there's no "easy" reason for her poor polling--it can't be solved by turning out more black voters. In other words, she's polling poorly because people don't like her. Right now, there's not much she can do besides pray that the Affordable Care Act that she was so instrumental in passing becomes less unpopular by November and hoping that the GOP doesn't nominate a strong candidate.
Not that that's such a far-fetched hope. There's no front runner in the Republican primary, and while Speaker of the House Thom Tillis just barely edges out the rest of the pack in most polling, he's actually less popular (but less well-known) than Hagan, with a net disapproval rating of 19% compared to Hagan's 7%. If Speaker Tillis is the nominee, it's possible that his unpopular tenure running an unpopular legislature that passed an unpopular voter ID law could trigger higher turnout among the minorities and students whose votes Sen. Hagan could really use. Or maybe that's the ultra-optimistic view for Democrats, and it'll actually follow the trends that especially bad midterm years tend to follow. Who knows at this point? TOSS-UP
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