Will North Carolina be the big surprise on Election Day?

With its 16 electoral votes, North Carolina is strategically important for both presidential campaigns. If Donald Trump wins there, as well as in Georgia and Pennsylvania, he will have the 270 electoral votes he needs. If he doesn't, he'll need two more states outside of his base in the Electoral College. Kamala Harris could win the presidency by taking all the blue wall states. But if she loses either of them, North Carolina offers her the most likely path to victory, with Georgia and Arizona leaning increasingly toward Trump in the final days of the election.¹

Of the seven swing states this year, North Carolina is the most puzzling. It is the only swing state that Donald Trump carried in 2020 while losing by 4.4 points in the national popular vote. He received 49.9% of the vote in the state, compared to 46.9% nationally, while Biden fell 2.7 points short of his statewide vote share in North Carolina, with just 48.6%. In short, Trump was nearly six points ahead of his national score in the Tar Heel State.

Since Trump is much more competitive in the popular vote nationally and in swing states this year, he is likely to be well ahead in North Carolina. But he isn't. All poll aggregates show him with a lead of at most one point, which isn't much better than his national performance.

We have good reason to believe that both campaigns' internal polls are consistent with public polls. Candidates' time is scarce and valuable in the final days of a presidential election. But both candidates have spent significant time in the state; On October 30, both candidates visited North Carolina again.

So why is North Carolina, a state that Trump should comfortably lead and that Democratic presidential candidates have elected only twice in the last half century, in play this year?

Since 2020, North Carolina's population has increased by nearly 400,000, trailing only Texas and Florida. One hypothesis, therefore, is that the state's rapid population growth has tipped the political balance in favor of Democrats. But voter registration statistics show the opposite. Since 2020, the number of registered Democrats has fallen by 168,000 while the number of registered Republicans has increased by 118,000, reducing the Democratic lead from nearly 400,000 in 2020 to just 113,000.

Another plausible hypothesis is a pro-Harris mobilization of the state's black voters, who make up nearly a quarter of the state's electorate. Here too, the data we have so far goes in the other direction. In 2020, Trump received just seven percent of the black vote. According to surveys, this year its share is likely to more than double.

A third hypothesis: Traditional Republicans could no longer tolerate Donald Trump and are leaving their ranks to support Harris. Again, plausible, but inconsistent with previous evidence. Trump received about 95% of the Republican vote this year, as he did four years ago.

The most plausible hypothesis of all: A massive swath of women upset about it Dobbs Overturning the decision Roe v. Wade. But in North Carolina, the opposite appears to be the case. According to several reputable polls, Harris is tied with Trump only among women. (Conversely, Trump's lead among men is remarkably small.)

The evidence we have so far supports only one conclusion: Trump's lead in North Carolina is smaller than expected because he is doing significantly worse with white voters than he did four years ago. According to 2020 exit polls, Trump beat Biden 66% to 33% in this group, which makes up nearly two-thirds of the state's electorate. This year, his share of the white vote has fallen to 58%, while Harris is getting about 40%.

If Marist's recent poll in North Carolina is accurate, this trend extends beyond the much-discussed education gap in white America. Harris' share of whites without a college degree is 29%, compared to Biden's 21%. Four years ago, Biden only received the support of 50% of college-educated whites, but Harris's share is 61%.

It's possible that the North Carolina mystery will disappear after the votes are counted and that Trump's performance will be consistent with both history and his overall statewide vote. But if the disparity persists through Election Day, analysts will wonder why so many white North Carolinians have deserted the candidate of the party that almost always wins the state.