When you watch the returns begin rolling in on election night, there’s one state you might want to keep an eye on if only because the way it goes could be a harbinger of big trouble for Donald Trump’s dreams of winning another term in office.
As Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post notes, North Carolina is ground zero for both Trump and the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris because if Harris secures the state, it would be nearly impossible for Trump to find enough electoral votes to win.
“North Carolina polls close early, at 7:30 p.m. Moreover, state law allows processing of mail-in votes well before Election Day, making an early count possible. (Some states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, cannot start processing until Election Day, which could result in delays of several days before a winner is determined.) Should Harris win North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes, Trump’s chances of victory diminish greatly. He would need a virtual sweep of other battleground states (and likely all of the blue-wall states).”
Earlier this month, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) hinted that his state would indeed be a key to Harris winning the election, remarking, “It’s close here in North Carolina. It always is. This was Biden-Harris’s closest loss in 2020, only 1.3 percent. So the fact that Kamala Harris, as vice president of the United States, has been to North Carolina 17 times shows that she cares about our state. She knows that we are in play. And she knows that if she wins North Carolina, she is the next president of the United States, because Trump has no other pathway.”
Even worse for Trump, Rubin adds, is that an early victory in North Carolina could depress turnout in Western battleground states (i.e. Arizona and Nevada), which would hand those electoral votes to Harris, too, meaning she’d not only win, but win in a landslide that could not be denied or contested, no matter what the GOP’s plan is for court action.
How close is the race in North Carolina at the moment? Recent polls show it’s dead even or give Harris a slight three-point lead, which is within the margin of error.
But the good news for Democrats is that voter registration is way up for likely Harris voters, according to Target Smart, which recently reported that registration by Democrats is up significantly since President Joe Biden left the race, especially among two key demographic groups, women and African-Americans. This is especially true since pop superstar Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Harris, which is causing young voters to get involved.
“The week of July 21, Democrats registrations were up 31 percent from 2020 while GOP registrations were up that week just 5 percent, and that does not include the unaffiliated voters,” according to The Daily Mail. “Among black voters, [registration] was up 124 percent, among Latinos registrations were up 101 percent. Among black women, they were up 130 percent while young black women registering to vote was up 231 percent.”
Such increases in registration are the worst possible news for Trump, who is seeing his margins shrink, even among independent voters who cast a ballot for him in 2016 but switched to Biden four years later. A shrinking voter base is the very last thing Trump and Republicans want to see as it could cost them control of the White House and both houses of Congress.
Bottom line: The electoral map is “expanding” for Harris, Rubin concludes while at the same time it’s “contracting” for Trump. And that spells landslide and an undeniable mandate for Democrats.
