The Haley effect in North Carolina

Despite having ended her campaign, Nikki Haley got 17% of the Pennsylvania primary vote last week.

When Donald Trump won North Carolina in 2020, turnout reach record highs for modern elections. More than 75% of registered voters turned out. Republicans outperformed Democrats and unaffiliated voters, with 82% casting a ballot compared to 75% of Democrats and 70% of unaffiliated voters. Trump’s win debunked the time honored maxim that high turnout is good for Democrats in North Carolina.

Trump won the state by only 1.3 percent, or less than 75,000 votes. He’ll probably need a similar turnout advantage to beat Joe Biden this year. However, there’s evidence that some Republicans might have had their fill of his bluster and shenanigans.

Last week in the Pennsylvania primary, Nikki Haley got almost 17% of the vote against Trump even though she dropped out of the race about six weeks ago. Those protest votes should be an ominous sign to the Trump campaign. The Wall Street Journal writes this morning that Haley’s votes across the states are concentrated in urban/suburban counties where she has won more than 25% of GOP voters. Haley also pulled almost a quarter of the votes of educated and younger GOP primary voters.

In North Carolina, Haley received over 23% of the votes in the Super Tuesday primary in March. That’s over 250,000 core Republican voters who registered their displeasure with Donald Trump. While most might come home to Trump in November, some will probably take a pass on the election.

Like other states, Haley’s voters in North Carolina are concentrated in more urban and suburban counties. She won 45% of the vote in Mecklenburg and 38% in Wake, the state’s two most populous counties. She even won about a quarter of the vote in Cabarrus and Union Counties, fast growing suburban counties that are shifting toward Democrats.

So far, Trump has yet to put together much of a campaign in North Carolina. While he’s held a couple of rallies, he has not run much advertising and has no designated field offices. He’s likely counting on his cult-like following to stay intact and show up because of their worship more than any sort of turnout operation.

The Biden campaign, in contrast, is here in force. They’ve been running ads for weeks and have opened field offices in most major metropolitan areas. Last week, they opened one in Fayetteville. Democrats believe they can win the state. GOP margins are consistently thin here even though Republicans have won the presidential contest in North Carolina every cycle since Barack Obama’s razor thin win in 2008.

For Trump to win in November, he needs to have a turnout similar to 2020 with GOP voters over performing Democrats by six or seven points. If Haley voters decide to take a pass on the election, the outcome gets murky very fast. Democrats are building a robust campaign with a party lead by a dynamic leader, Anderson Clayton, who intends to cut into Trump’s rural base. The party has made strides into suburban counties where turnout is higher than both central cities and rural areas.

Finally, Republicans have fielded one of the weakest council of state slates in recent history and they have no U.S. Senate campaign to offer a buffer. Their gerrymandered Congressional and legislative races leave outcomes predetermined, giving Republican voters little to get excited about. Victory for the GOP rests almost solely on Trump’s popularity or Biden’s unpopularity.