North Carolina has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in just about every election over the past several decades.
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But will it be a battleground in November? Pundits – and the current president – have thought so, due at least in part to the coastal state’s razor-thin margins of victory in recent presidential contests.
A swing state, according to a literal definition, is one that’s “considered to play a key role in the outcome of presidential elections” and where candidates of both the Democratic and Republican parties “have similar levels of support.” The group of such states each presidential cycle is often similar, although variations can occur due to factors like changing demographics and turnout. Georgia, for example, recently swung into the swing state category in the wake of President Joe Biden’s surprising win in 2020 and other lower-ticket Democratic victories.
Democrats – looking back at former President Donald Trump’s narrow victory in North Carolina in 2020 – hope it can be the Georgia of the 2024 election. After Biden upended the race by dropping out and backing Vice President Kamala Harris as his party’s standard-bearer on July 21, the Harris campaign said the Tar Heel State is among the battlegrounds it is focused on. But some GOP officials previously insisted – before Biden’s withdrawal – that the Democrats had no chance of flipping the state, which U.S. News in June handicapped as “lean Republican” for the 2024 presidential election.
Here’s everything you need to know about North Carolina, which was No. 19 in the most recent Best States rankings by U.S. News, as a 2024 battleground.
While the state is often referred to as “purple,” its voters have only chosen two Democratic presidential candidates since the early 1970s: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008.
North Carolina, however, was consistently blue earlier in the 20th century, and the margins between Democratic and Republican candidates have been smaller in recent elections. The state’s 16 electoral votes put it in the top 10 among all states. It is less of a bellwether compared to other swing states, but eight of the last 12 North Carolina winners ultimately........