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Guest Essay
By Thomas B. Edsall
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
On Nov. 5, North Carolina will determine whether a slate of Republican candidates who believe that the 2020 election was stolen, who dismiss Trump’s 91 felony charges and who are eager to be led by the most prodigious liar in the history of the presidency, can win in a battleground state.
Pope McCorkle, a Democratic consultant and professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, argued in an email that the results of this year’s Republican primary election on March 5 demonstrate that “the North Carolina G.O.P. is now a MAGA party. With the gubernatorial nomination of Mark Robinson, the N.C. G.O.P. is clearly in the running for the most MAGA party in the nation.”
As they are elsewhere, MAGA leaders in North Carolina are confrontational.
In February 2018, Robinson, the first Black lieutenant governor of the state, described on Facebook his view of survivors of school shootings who then publicly call for gun control. They are “media prosti-tots” who suffer from “the liberal syndrome of rectal cranial inversion mixed with a healthy dose of just plain evil and stupid permeating your hallways.”
In a March 2018 posting on Facebook, Robinson declared: “This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.”
In an October 2021 sermon in a North Carolina church, Robinson told parishioners, “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes, I called it filth.”
There are many ways to express MAGA extremism.
On May 13, 2020, Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Schools, responded on X (formerly Twitter) to a suggestion that Barack Obama be sent to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp on charges of treason. Morrow’s counterproposal?
I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad. I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.
In Morrow’s world, Obama would be unlikely to die alone. Morrow’s treason execution list, according to a report on CNN, includes North Carolina’s current governor, Roy Cooper, former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, Representative Ilhan Omar, Hillary Clinton, Senator Chuck Schumer, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates — and President Biden.
As Morrow put it succinctly on Facebook in 2020: “We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!!”
The mainstream is worried. The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce voiced its concern in a statement on March 8:
Tuesday’s primary election results were a startling warning of the looming threats to North Carolina’s business climate. While we celebrate the victories of Chamber-backed candidates, many of the races we were watching turned for candidates that do not share our vision for North Carolina.
Particularly in Republican races, populist candidates enjoyed great success. In many instances, previously unknown candidates defeated sitting legislators and elected officials with stronger qualifications, pristine voting records, and significantly more funding.
North Carolina Republicans have been able to maintain a slim advantage over Democrats, in large part because of the racial gulf between the two parties.
In 2023, according to a University of North Carolina study, whites were a minority of registered Democrats, at 40 percent, while Black voters were a plurality, at 46 percent, with the remainder being Hispanic, Asian American and other ethnicities.
Registered North Carolina Republicans, in contrast, were 88 percent white, 2 percent Black, 2 percent Hispanic and the rest other ethnic groups.
The racial divide has turned North Carolina politics into a battle between overwhelmingly white rural counties and increasingly diverse urban centers like Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
Urban and suburban population growth has given the Democrats some advantage, but there has been a large and expanding difference in white and Black turnout rates.
Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan research organization, released a report showing a consistent gap between white and Black turnout in nonpresidential year elections, from 2002 to 2022, ranging from a 6-to-11 point white advantage up through 2020, which grew to a 16-point white advantage in 2022.
The recent rise of MAGA forces in both the Republican electorate and in the ranks of the state party has provoked a series of internal disputes, the result of which has been the marginalization of the once dominant establishment wing of the party.
In February 2021, for example, the North Carolina Republican Party censured Senator Richard Burr because he voted to convict President Trump in his second impeachment trial.
Then, in June 2023, the party censured mainstream Republican Senator Thom Tillis for his support of gay rights, some moderate immigration initiatives and gun violence policies.
These intraparty rifts have left many traditional Republicans frustrated with their own party. For some, that frustration may drive lower turnout, potentially hurting Trump and far-right conservatives running for state office this year.
Wayne King, a former party vice chairman, warned that the censure of Tillis “sends a terrible message to independents that the N.C. G.O.P. is no longer a big tent party.”
“If it continues,” King added, “North Carolina will become a blue state.”
In many respects, North Carolina stands apart from the rest of the South. Ferrel Guillory, a professor at the University of North Carolina, described by email the bifurcated character of partisanship in the state: “Republican presidential candidates carried North Carolina in 12 of the 14 presidential elections from 1968 to 2020. Over that same period, Democrats won ten of the 14 elections for governor.”
Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both branches of the legislature, but Democrats have won every election for attorney general for more than 100 years.
For decades, Democratic strategists have predicted that North Carolina would become a Democratic-leaning state in presidential elections, but these expectations have failed to materialize. The state voted Democratic in 1976, supporting Jimmy Carter, and in 2008, backing Barack Obama, in a very close race (47.70 to 47.34 percent). Obama lost North Carolina in 2012.
In an email, McCorkle wrote that ever since arch-conservative Senator Jesse Helms retired in 2002, “Winning Republican statewide candidates emphasized their solid, partisan conservatism while trying to avoid the way that Senator Helms always kept rocking the political boat.”
This, McCorkle added, “was the basic formula pursued by former G.O.P. governors Jim Martin and Pat McCrory, as well as Senator Thom Tillis and former Senator Richard Burr.”
Throughout this period, McCorkle continued, “beneath the surface, the more extreme right-wing spirit of Helms has continued to percolate. Now in the Trump era, it has been magnified and has boiled over inside the Republican electorate.”
This brings us back to Mark Robinson and his nomination for governor this year:
Robinson’s “cultural” positions on such issues as abortion and the repealed “HB2 bathroom bill” against gay rights even go beyond the right-wing stances staked out by Trump. Moreover, with the surprise primary win of Michele Morrow for State School Superintendent, the N.C. G.O.P. is testing the outer limits of MAGAism: Morrow ideologically goes beyond Robinson with her background in QAnon theories, characterizing public schools as socialism-woke indoctrination centers, and her startling calls for the public execution of Presidents Obama and Biden, as well as Governor Cooper.
McCorkle believes that the combination of Trump, Robinson and Murrow may prove toxic: “These days we don’t usually think of the races below affecting or influencing the presidential one at the top of a ticket. Trump, however, could have his hands more than full with the rest of the Republican ticket.”
There is considerable disagreement concerning the political consequences of the selection of hard-right Republican nominees this time around.
Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke, agreed that “extremist candidates” like Robinson, Morrow and Dan Bishop, the Republican nominee for attorney general, “are absolutely liabilities for the Republican ticket.”
But, Hildebrand cautioned, “whether President Biden reaps the full benefits remains to be seen. Trump remains popular here and will invest heavily in a state he can’t afford to lose.” Hildebrand pointed out that in 2020, “over 100,000 voters split their tickets between Trump and Josh Stein, then the Democratic candidate for attorney general. Robinson may drive this number up without necessarily producing Biden converts.”
“North Carolina is a deep purple state that isn’t turning redder, Hildebrand wrote, “but it’s turning bluer more slowly than many expected. As a result, it is likely to remain a closely contested — and bitterly divided — state for the foreseeable future.”
David McClennan, a political scientist at Meredith College, was cautious in his assessment of the shift to the right among North Carolina Republicans, noting that he would not characterize the party as “full-MAGA.”
But, he added in his email:
The primary voters that put these candidates on the ballot definitely reflect the MAGA ideology. In recent Meredith Polls, we found that those with the strongest approval of Donald Trump were the most likely to vote in the primary elections. Put simply, the energy in North Carolina Republican voters reflects the MAGA wing of the party.
McClennan noted that the state’s Republican electorate has
become more conservative over the last decade. At the Meredith Poll, we track political polarization and have found that the median self-described Republican voter in North Carolina has gotten about 10 percent more conservative on policy issues and their level of negativity toward the Democratic Party has gone up by about 15 percent since 2017.
The most recent Meridith Poll, conducted Jan. 26-31, showed some significant differences between North Carolina Republicans and Democrats.
Asked whether “having a strong leader for American is more important than being a democracy,” Republicans agreed, 48.7 to 46.3 percent, while Democrats disagreed 62.4 to 34.4 percent.
Asked whether they agree that “our American way of life is disappearing so fast we may have to use force to save it,” Republicans agreed 61.1 to 31.5 percent and Democrats disagreed 57.0 to 35.9 percent.
In many respects, demographic trends suggest that North Carolina should be a top target for Democrats.
According to the census, the state’s population grew from 8.05 million in 2000 to 10.84 million in 2023.
Among key Democratic constituencies, the nonwhite share of the population grew from 28.8 percent to 38.5 percent over those 23 years, and the percentage with college degrees rose from 22.2 to 33.9 percent.
Sarah Treul, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, argued in an email that prediction of a purple North Carolina are overblown:
I think the speculation that the population growth in North Carolina around Raleigh and Charlotte would fuel the success of the Democratic Party was misguided or at least premature.
A lot of the growth around the Research Triangle area, for example, is occurring in suburbs and exurbs that tend to vote more Republican. Places such as Johnston County and northeast Wake County, including Wake Forest and Zebulon, are places seeing massive population growth and are also places where Republicans traditionally perform very well.
Treul wrote that
much of the success of the North Carolina Democratic Party decades ago was built on conservative or at least moderate platforms. As much of the national Democratic Party has shifted its attention to progressive politics, it should not surprise the party that counties that used to be reliably Democratic in the 1990s are now reliably Republican.
Reconnecting with these voters, in Treul’s view, “still needs to be a part of the Democratic Party’s strategy if it wants to win statewide office.”
Candis Watts Smith, a political scientist at Duke, described North Carolina in an email as “a purple state demographically” with a Republican Party that “has moved to the right faster than Democrats have shifted to the left.”
These trends, in Smith’s view, are likely to improve Democratic prospects:
Given the extreme culture war-focused policy stances that candidates like Robinson are offering, many North Carolina Democrats may be inclined to turn out. If North Carolinians, like many other Americans, are not particularly interested in a rematch of the 2020 presidential election, they may certainly be watchful of down ballot races — and Biden may benefit from that.
Smith provided data, however, that suggested that the rapid growth of North Carolina, including the influx of many immigrants from other states, has not worked to the advantage of Democrats.
Smith cited a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill report, “How Have Registered Voters in N.C. Shifted Demographically Over the Past Decade?” that found that “North Carolina has added nearly one million new registered voters since 2013. In that time span, there has been an increase of over 210,000 new Republican voters, a decrease of over 350,000 Democrats, and an increase of over 960,000 Unaffiliated voters.”
Jason Matthew Roberts, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, pointed out that ticket splitting, a practice in decline throughout most of the United States, remains a characteristic of North Carolina politics:
North Carolina voters do regularly split their tickets in statewide and national races. The current governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat who has managed to win two terms at the same time that the Republican presidential candidate won the state.
Given that, Roberts maintained,
It is not clear to me that nominees like Robinson and Morrow will necessarily help President Biden. It would not be at all surprising to see Robinson lose the governorship to Josh Stein, the current attorney general, while seeing Trump carry the state in the presidential contest.
Overall, Roberts contended in an email,
There are two countervailing political trends at work in North Carolina. The Research Triangle or the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill and surrounding suburbs area is growing very rapidly, and it is also an area that is extremely well-educated. Nationwide, we are seeing more educated voters move toward the Democratic Party and you clearly see that in the Triangle and in Charlotte and its suburbs.
At the same time, a lot of rural voters who traditionally voted for Democrats statewide have started voting more Republican. So far the rural/Republican trend has counterbalanced the Triangle/Democratic trend and the Republicans have won more times than not in statewide races in recent years.
Anderson Clayton, the new chairman of the state Democratic Party, Roberts wrote, “ran on a platform of trying to reach more rural voters. This fall it will be an interesting test to see how effective that strategy has been, and to see if the growth trend has been able to overtake the rural trend.”
What is striking is how quickly and completely the North Carolina Republican Party has been taken over by MAGA Trump loyalists who, in turn, have repudiated the old guard.
Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, described the takeover in an email, citing the results of the state’s 2022 and 2024 primary elections.
With this year’s primary election, Trump captured three-quarters of the N.C. Republican primary vote, compared to Haley’s quarter. With that as a base line, you look at the gubernatorial contest, with Trump-endorsed Robinson garnering two-thirds of the primary vote, to one-third for Folwell and Graham, both the non-Trump candidates.
This is comparable to the 2022 Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, where Trump-endorsed Ted Budd and Trump-aligned Mark Walker combined got two-thirds of the primary vote, while former governor Pat McCrory — the more “establishment” non-Trump Republican — got only a quarter of the vote.
So, Bitzer continued, “in my analysis, the North Carolina Republican Party — in terms of the party’s electorate, as an organization, and in its candidates and, in general, its elected officials — is the MAGA/Trump Republican Party of North Carolina.”
The Trumpification of the Republican Party has not led to its dominance. Bitzer pointed to the 2004 election, when George W. Bush won the state by 12 points while Democratic Gov. Mike Easley cruised to re-election, by the same margin.
That election stands in contrast to the 2020 contest, Easley pointed out, when there was “a point and a half spread between Trump’s 49.9 percent win and Cooper’s 51.5 percent win.”
Bitzer’s description of the current situation amounts to a good description of the 2024 election in the state and the nation as a whole: “North Carolina statewide candidates live on the knife’s edge when it comes the margins of victory.”
What will be of particular interest this year is whether a MAGA-driven Republican Party that has no interest in reaching out to the center can successfully compete in a state as evenly balanced between left and right as North Carolina.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.
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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @edsall
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