CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Oct. 30, 2008 – 12:05 a.m.
Delightful Surprise for North Carolinians: They Matter in the Presidential Race
By Marie Horrigan and Andrew Satter, CQ Staff
If you had asked someone a year ago to name the swing states for the 2008 presidential election, North Carolina probably wouldn’t have been on the list.
After all, the state has backed the Republican nominee in nine of the last 10 elections, with the exception of former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter in 1976.
But Democratic advances across the country have put even the most reliably Republican states into play this year.
And North Carolinians say there is an unprecedented increase in interest in the presidential race. “I’ve been covering campaigns since 1976 and we’ve never seen anything like this,” said Democratic consultant Gary Pearce.
Overall registration had increased by more than half a million people since the beginning of the year, a phenomenon that can be attributed to overall excitement about the election and also at North Carolina’s chance — for the first time in decades — to affect the outcome of the presidential election. As of Tuesday, North Carolina had 2.8 million registered Democrats, 2 million Republicans and 1.4 million voters not affiliated with either major party.
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Black voters — who historically vote Democratic — account for 31 percent of the new voters registered since Jan. 1 and overall have increased their proportion of the voting population by 1 or 2 percentage points, according to statistics from the North Carolina Board of Elections.
That small margin could make a big difference.
“They’re registering more Democratic than – I guess not than ever before, but maybe since reconstruction,” GOP political analyst Carter Wrenn says with a laugh.
The increase among Democratic voters reflects demographic changes and the national trend against Republicans, but it also can be attributed to strong ground game and get-out-the-vote efforts by the Obama campaign, several analysts said.
“It was up to Barack Obama to change the dynamics. And that’s what he’s done,” said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For days, Obama and McCain have been in a statistical dead heat in the state. The latest AP-GfK poll shows McCain leading Obama 48 percent to 46 percent. A recent Reuters/Zogby poll found Obama slightly ahead and the pollsters wrote: “McCain builds big margins in the western parts of the state, and Obama counters with the same in the east and the Raleigh-Durham area. Obama’s lead comes from Independents who favor him by by 21 and his gender advantage (plus seven with women and even with men.) McCain is up by 27 with whites, so African-American turnout may decide who squeaks by in North Carolina.“ (emphasis added)
Even with the increased Democratic registration and even if Obama is able to carry North Carolina, having him at the top of the ticket may end up being a surprisingly mixed bag for down ballot Democrats.
Delightful Surprise for North Carolinians: They Matter in the Presidential Race
In some recent presidential elections the Democratic gubernatorial and Senate candidates have done significantly better than the Democratic presidential candidate in the state, but that may not be true this election cycle. The Democratic nominee for the Senate, state Sen. Kay Hagan, and Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue, the Democratic candidate for governor, are polling in the mid 40-percent range, similar to Obama’s numbers.
The fact that they are not doing better than Obama may be because of the extent to which North Carolina Democratic candidates have embraced the national party this year. North Carolina Democrats are a conservative bunch, and top Democratic officials such as Gov. Michael F. Easley and former Gov. Jim Hunt won, in part, by distancing themselves from the more liberal strain of the national party.
Hagan and Perdue have hewed more closely with the national party, which has its pluses – increased turnout – but also has its drawbacks.
“The presidential race has taken all the air out of the room here . . . The Democrats are pretty much rising or falling with the same level as Obama,” Democratic consultant Pearce said.
The overall boost in Democratic voter turnout may not be enough to offset gains North Carolina Democrats usually make by running away from Washington and the national party.
The Senate race between Hagan and Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole , a longtime GOP ‘rock star,’ has grown increasingly competitive over the past several months. CQ Politics rates the race No Clear Favorite. Analysts, and the Republican Party, attribute Hagan’s surge to massive spending by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The DSCC has slammed the 72-year-old Dole as ineffective — and implied she’s too old — with their “rocking chair ad.” This week Dole attacked Hagan with an ad that asserted she participated in a “secret fundraiser” hosted by a leader of the the Godless Americans PAC. The ad says: “She hid from cameras and took Godless money. What did Hagan promise in return?”
The spot ends with a picture of Hagan and a female voice saying, “There is no God,” repeating a quote from the executive director of the PAC. The implication is that Hagan made the statement, but the state senator said Wednesday that it was not her and called it a “fabricated, pathetic ad.”
“I am absolutely appalled at Elizabeth Dole ’s vile tactics with this ad that she has put out. This is politics of the worst kind,” Hagan said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. Hagan said she was a Sunday School teacher and an elder at First Presbyterian Church. “What upsets me so much is Elizabeth Dole is attacking my strong Christian faith, and how dare she attack my faith,” she added.
Dole spokesman Dan McLagan said it was “totally ridiculous” to charge the ad was unfair. McLagan said the campaign was not trying to suggest that Hagan made the last comment – which McLagan said was recycled from earlier in the ad – nor was the campaign questioning Hagan’s faith. “This questions her judgment. It questions who she’s going to raise money with and spend time with,” he said.
But voters may feel the advertisement hits below the belt, in which case it could damage Dole more than Hagan, said Wrenn, the Republican consultant. “Sometimes you throw a hand grenade and blow up the other guy. Sometimes you blow up yourself,” Wrenn said. “That one could backfire and blow Dole up.”
In the gubernatorial election there are other issues at play, Pearce said. Perdue is facing a strong opponent in Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, and has stumbled in the debates, he said. Their match-up also brings up regional conflict between the eastern half of the state - including the state government in Raleigh and the white-collar Research Triangle - and the western parts of the state, including Charlotte.
The gubernatorial race “could be as much a regional thing in the end,” Pearce said.
Delightful Surprise for North Carolinians: They Matter in the Presidential Race
CQ Politics rates the gubernatorial race Leans Democratic.
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