By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff

CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: Republican Favored

Electoral Votes: 15

John McCain cannot afford to ignore Barack Obama ’s efforts to pull off an upset in North Carolina, in what would be a catastrophic setback for McCain’s hopes nationally. But to win, Obama would have to reverse the strong current that has long been running against his party in the state’s presidential politics, as throughout the South. Republican nominees have carried North Carolina in nine of the past 10 presidential elections, with the exception being Georgia’s Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Obama built a statewide organization in advance of his key 56 percent to 42 percent Democratic primary win over Clinton on May 6, in which he was boosted by strong support among a black constituency that makes up a bit more than a fifth of the state’s population. And he has been fighting hard to make inroads. Obama ran his first TV ads in the state on June 20, two weeks before John McCain put his first ads up.

By late July, Obama had 11 campaign offices in the state. McCain, who coasted to a 74 percent win in a primary held two months after he had clinched the Republican nomination, was still (as of midsummer) coordinating his North Carolina campaign out of a regional office in Tallahassee, Fla.

“The embedded Republican vote in a presidential election has been fairly solid for almost three decades now, so you would have to say that McCain has an edge, but I’m going to tell you that the Obama people have been pouring resources in here,” said Ferrell Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Obama’s strategy to win depends on drawing huge turnouts among two key constituencies: black voters and transplants.

The state’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas — Charlotte and Research Triangle, which is anchored by Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh — have become major draws for technology-related employers. “The Obama campaign has some potential to win some voters, to change the dynamics, by making a strong run in the big metropolitan areas here filled with high-tech workers and the type of people who don’t fit the classic Old South/New South model,” Guillory said.

It would be hard for Obama to make the big leap in voter support that he needs without cutting into the typical support given to Republicans by white, native North Carolinians. According to Dean Debnam, a Raleigh pollster, McCain enjoys a solid base among white voters born in North Carolina, most of whom are conservative.

There is one element that could potentially hurt McCain that is out of his control: the presence on the ballot of former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr as the unusually high-profile nominee of the Libertarian Party. He could draw white conservative voters away.

Nonetheless, Debham concludes: “I don’t think Obama’s going to pull through in North Carolina. He’s just not going to get enough of the white vote.”

But with the size of McCain’s edge open to question, Sen. Elizabeth Dole and other down-ballot Republicans can’t bank on a coattails effect. Dole is favored in her re-election contest against state Sen. Kay Hagan, but the Democrats are not stepping away. According to news reports in July, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reserved up to $6 million in airtime across the state to bolster the effort to unseat Dole.

The Democrats’ hopes hinge on Dole’s ties to Bush being a major negative when Election Day rolls around. As the chairwoman of the Republicans’ national Senate campaign organization during the trying 2006 election year, Dole presented a vocal defense of Bush on the Iraq War and other issues. But she has toned down her support and will not be attending the Republican convention in St. Paul next month. Her campaign says “She’s got a busy week scheduled in North Carolina,” during that time.