North Carolina is the center of the political universe as the state's demographics shift dramatically - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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Donald Trump has a math problem in North Carolina.
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The state the President won by more than 3 percentage points four years ago has continued its gradual political transformation, moving away from the red states to its south and toward its bluer neighbors to the north
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The state is growing more diverse with Hispanic and Asian immigrants, its cities and suburbs are booming with unbridled growth from northern transplants, older voters from the northeast who are fleeing Trump have retired to the state's coast and the Tar Heel State's once large rural population is shrinking.
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This shift has been occurring for years, but it could present Trump and Republicans with a perfect storm of problems at the same time that the state has become the center of the political universe with close races for president, Senate and governor.
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"We realize that we have been infiltrated by other people that have more liberal views... than we do," Cheryl Miles, a Trump supporter,
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Martin County, after twice voting for President Barack Obama, narrowly backed Trump in 2016, helping him cut into margins in the bigger metropolitan areas.
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Christian conservatives who were somewhat skeptical of Trump four years ago are now fully behind the Republican leader.
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"He stands for Christian values," Miles said. "I know that sometimes when he talks, he doesn't talk the way I would like for him to talk. But I like the stands that he takes. And sometimes you have to look beyond what the person is saying and (to) what he is doing."
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The greater area around Raleigh, including college towns like Chapel Hill and Durham, is known as the research triangle, because of the topflight universities that are crammed into a relatively small area.
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Those institutions have not only attracted hundreds of thousands of more liberal voters to North Carolina, but they have provided the intellectual capital to fuel a growing technology and health care industry that has led to thousands of new jobs just over the last few years.
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The couple had been on green cards for decades, unable to vote in any election. But then Trump won, and the couple said shortly thereafter they became citizens almost expressly to vote against the President.
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just two weeks before Election Day, North Carolina remains a toss-up, according to multiple recent polls that find Biden with the narrowest of margins.
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Obama, the last Democrat to win the state in 2008, carried North Carolina because of overwhelming turnout from Black and young Americans. Biden's path, while similar, has some notable differences: In order to carry North Carolina next month, Biden will lean on a coalition that is Whiter, more suburban and older than the one that delivered the state to Obama 12 years ago.
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"I've got a pretty good fix that most of the ones going to the Trump rally are probably voting for me," said Kidwell, whose signs tout him as the "most conservative" member of the North Carolina General Assembly.
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"He is going to (need to) boost his numbers in rural counties to make up for what looks like an even bigger defeat in Raleigh, Charlotte," said Michael Bitzer, a professor at Catawba College and an expert on the state's politics. "I am just not sure how much more he can squeeze out of those rural areas."
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Trump, on the other hand, can't solely count on the same turnout from Eastern and Western North Carolina, the two areas that propelled him to victory four years ago.
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He is staunchly against wearing masks to combat the coronavirus and did not wear one when greeting voters in Washington.
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"It worries me more on the statewide and national elections. ... But I think we are going to do well. North Carolina is, even if our metro areas are more liberal leaning, we still have a good number of people who are conservative."
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Brian Buck said it is "concerning" that liberals are "coming from up north down to North Carolina" and he feared it would eventually "change us from a toss-up state to a blue state."
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"The damn Democrats don't realize that he is just the President. He is not God," Brian Buck said. "What was he supposed to do? Go into the basement and go hocus pocus and make a damn treatment for it? No. So they blame him for it, but he had no more control over it getting here than I did."
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"I believe he is more for the Christians than the Democrats," said Sawyer. "And that is one of the most important things."
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"In 2016, President Trump brought out a lot of voters in the Eastern part of the state that previously voted for Barack Obama, or didn't vote, because he wasn't a stereotypical Republican," said Nick Trainer, Trump's director of battleground strategy. These voters "saw Barack Obama as a change agent and saw Donald Trump as a change agent."
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"I really don't trust Donald Trump," he said, wearing a Desert Storm veteran hat, US Army mask and white veteran T-shirt. "It has been awhile since there has been this kind of unrest in politics in this country. ... It is best not to discuss politics because there is always going to be some friction involved."
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One of those so-called Yankees would be Bridgette Hodges, an African-American grandmother who moved to the state from New Jersey around a year ago to be closer to her family, like Sanaa, her grandchild. The duo waited for over two hours on a recent rainy Friday so Hodges could not only vote for Biden, but register as a North Carolina voter for the first time.
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"There are two groups we need to be focused on and that is turning out the African American vote and also suburban women," said Meredith Cuomo, the executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party. "We have seen just a real shift in our demographics since 2016."
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Turning out voters like Hodges and Puebla was the missing piece for Clinton in 2016, whose campaign went into Election Day believing she would win the state. But turnout was down among reliable Democratic voters and up with voters in Eastern and Western reaches of the state, delivering Trump the win.
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"I don't think of myself as an anomaly, I think that younger Republican voters are more progressive... and it has now become a generational thing inside the party," said Plyler, his long red beard hanging out of his mask. "So, if Republicans are scared of these kinds of voters, then they are scared of Republicans. That's the shame of it."