President Joe Biden’s team wants to take North Carolina from the Republicans and give them some wiggle room in case they can take a swing state that Democrats won in 2020.
But voters in rural areas, who make up a big part of the state’s population, have continued to stay away from Democrats.
According to the 2020 census, about 3.5 million of the state’s 10.4 million residents live in rural places. A poll done by the Wall Street Journal in March found that 62% of voters in rural parts of seven battleground states, such as North Carolina, planned to vote for Trump.
As reported by WSJ, the number of Democratic voters in Wilson County has gone down, and more people have registered as unaffiliated. Wilson County is a rural county with a 40% black population that went Democratic in 2020. The state’s New Rural Project, which is run by Democrats, says that more black Americans in rural farming areas in North Carolina might not vote or vote for Trump on Election Day.
In “the state’s predominantly white and poor mountainous west,” the WSJ says Democrats are losing ground. In the state’s “countrypolitan” counties near Charlotte and Raleigh, there are “signs of a growing voter alignment with rural communities.”
Even though Democrats aren’t getting as many votes in rural places as they used to, they are still trying to get them. The Democratic Party has hired 60 people in North Carolina and is setting up field offices in cities and small towns. On Monday, one will open in Sylva, North Carolina. Anderson Clayton, chair of North Carolina’s Democratic Party, said, “It’s going to be a long haul, but rural is worth fighting for.”
538’s running polls average shows that Trump is ahead of Biden in the state by 6.6%. In the state, Trump’s lead is much bigger than it was at any point in the average 2020 polls, when Biden mostly led from February to November 2020.
Just over a point, Trump won North Carolina in 2020 with 49.93% to 48.59%. Since Ronald Reagan took over the state in 1980, Republicans have won all but one election in North Carolina. That election was for president in 2008, when Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton.
Source: Gazette
