North Carolina’s politics have always been geographically polarized. In the state’s semi-democratic polity of the early 20th century, political elites observed an informal tradition of rotating the governorship between eastern and western North Carolina.
My Substack, New Branchhead, is named in honor of Gov. Kerr Scott, whose ardent support from the eastern farm vote was equaled in fervor by the bitter opposition of Piedmont business interests. As the state urbanized, the East-West polarization became less marked. Today, the state is composed of a sort of uneasy triumvirate: rural areas, the exurbs and the suburbs.
The newly minted Harris-Walz ticket will have to compete in each of these three regions. Aside from the state’s small urban cores, their strongest region promises to be the suburban areas in urban counties like Mecklenburg and Wake. These are places like North Raleigh and South Charlotte with high incomes, high levels of education and clean, wide roads filled with German cars. Harris is poised to ride a Democratic trend in these districts to a solid victory.
That’s in part because these urban suburbs were holding up well for the Democratic ticket even as President Biden’s support declined across the state. Their growing social liberalism has brought them closer in line with inner-ring suburbs in blue states like New York and California, and revulsion toward the Orange Pretender seems to have solidified their Democratic lean.
Harris is more progressive than her erstwhile boss, but Republican plans to portray her as a left-wing radical seem like wishful thinking. We live in a country where avowed socialists are prominent and popular politicians. Compared to progressives like Bernie Sanders, Harris is comfortably within the mainstream of suburban opinion. Her running mate Tim Walz’s relatively lenient handling of the violent George Floyd protests may raise suburban anxieties, but I expect North Raleigh, where I live, to go for the Democratic ticket by at least 20 points.
The exurbs that begin to appear about 20 miles from Charlotte and Raleigh seem likely to be less receptive to Harris-Walz than their more urban cousins. The conservatism of the exurbs is real. Exurban counties have trended Democratic since the George W. Bush era, but only by a point or two a year, and the Democratic aspiration to win 40% of the vote there still seems to lie in the future.
Furthermore, the California liberal Harris is a relatively poor fit for exurban North Carolina. Many of the exurbanites moved to places like Union County because they wanted a less urban lifestyle. A politician forged in the most liberal city in America seems unlikely to do significantly better there than the ostentatiously unpretentious Biden.
Interestingly, the Harris ticket could be relatively more attractive to rural North Carolina, at least after accounting for this region’s strong Republican lean. That’s because rural and small-town North Carolina are far more diverse than other parts of rural America. Many counties in the Coastal Plain have large African American communities that have shown staying power despite decades of rural population decline.
Harris has the potential to excite rural Black voters in a way that no Democrat has since Barack Obama. She is running as culturally Black, embracing the music of Beyonce and other motifs of African American culture. Part of Barack Obama’s deep appeal to the Black community was that he brought Blackness into privileged spaces, a way of asserting the community’s right to recognition. Harris, like Obama, carries this promise for Black America, and it may inspire rural Black voters to turn out in North Carolina.
A note about Tim Walz. Running mates generally make little difference to the outcomes in presidential elections. But they can broaden a ticket’s appeal if they present a different, but appealing, political profile that complements the presidential nominee’s core pitch to the voters. With his profile as a small-town football coach, Walz could attract some support from more moderate rural whites in places like Richmond County that voted for Barack Obama but have since fled the national Democratic Party’s cultural liberalism.
The Harris-Walz ticket has potential in North Carolina. How well they navigate the state’s complex geo-cultural landscape will determine whether they can win the state.
Alexander H. Jones is a policy analyst with Carolina Forward. He lives in Carrboro. Have feedback? Reach him at alex@carolinaforward.org.
