5 takeaways from the election

I was going to wait until after the county canvass to post this, but these takeaways seem fairly durable--no matter what happens Friday. So, with all the caveats I can muster, here are five tentative takeaways from the 2024 elections in North Carolina

1. North Carolina is Still Purple.

For the 11th time in the last 12 elections, a Republican earned all of North Carolina's Electoral College votes for President. And, if that's the only data point you look at, you might think that North Carolina is as red as a Carolina Hurricanes jersey. But, of course, that wasn't the only election that took place in the Old North State last Tuesday. 

Residents of North Carolina cast votes in 14 congressional districts, 170 state legislative districts, 15 statewide offices (President, council of state, court of appeals and NC State Supreme Court), not to mention the local offices scattered throughout the state. It was a lot of elections and (unfortunately for those who like certainty) the results don't point in a single direction. 

Consider the Council of State. North Carolina Democrats gained a seat--moving from four to five. That may not seem like a big gain, but, as the map below illustrates, any split ticket voting is extremely rare. In fact, North Carolina is the only state in the United States South where voters split their tickets on even one statewide election--to say nothing about five.

In all, Republicans earned 50.3 percent of the total (two-party) votes for statewide offices in North Carolina; Democrats earned 49.7. Certainly not a blue outcome, but not a particularly red one, either.

The Democrats also broke the Republican supermajority, and held onto the first congressional district (more on that below).They will likely fall short of maintaining Allison Riggs' seat on the NC Supreme Court, but the margin is shrinking by the day.

Even the Presidential outcome is a little more purple than you might think at first glance. North Carolina gave the 25th highest vote share in the country to Kamala Harris--smack in the middle of the country.

As I argued in my recent book, North Carolina is a purple state. 

2. Maps Matter 

In the 118th Congress (2023-2024), North Carolina was represented by a split congressional delegation--seven Democrats and seven Republicans.

Then, the lines were redrawn with the expectation that the 119th congressional delegation in North Carolina would have 10 Republicans, three Democrats, and one question mark hovering over the 1st congressional district. The evidence for this assumption of partisan lean? The 2020 Presidential election results in each of the 14 districts. 

So, did the 2024 results follow the expectations? In a word: yes. 

As you can see below, every district with two-party competition fell within two points or fewer of the percentage of that district that voted for Trump in the 2020 election. 

In the one district with a more unpredictable outcome, Democrat Don Davis garnered 51 percent of the two-party vote share. Biden's two party vote share in 2020? You guessed it--51percent.

It is convenient to think that politicians can "outperform" a map, and perhaps at the margins they can. But, the vast majority of the time--and 100 percent of the time in the case of this map--election outcomes follow previous partisan voting patterns.

3. Ballot roll-off was Higher than Normal in the Gubernatorial Race, but That Wasn't the Difference Maker

After the accusations about Mark Robinson surfaced on CNN, it seemed clear that Josh Stein would likely win the gubernatorial election. But, would Stein's victory come from Republicans casting a vote for Stein, or would it come from ballot roll-off (the phenomenon where some voters skip over an office, or stop filling out the ballot entirely upon encountering an office where they don't want to cast a vote)?

The answer, at least for the gubernatorial election, is clearly the former. Ballot roll-off for the gubernatorial election was indeed much higher than in 2020 (3x higher), but as you can see in the graph below, the margin between Stein and Robinson *far* exceeds the margin between the number of people who cast a vote for President and did not cast a vote for Governor.

Although roll-off was clearly not the difference maker in the gubernatorial election, on the left side of the graph, however, you can see where it might have made a difference--the NC State Supreme Court.

4. Most Counties Didn't Shift Much

While the "winner" of each county is important, it's also important to look at marginal shifts. The graph below shows the six counties that shifted the most away from Trump on the top and the six that shifted the most towards Trump on the bottom. 

Many of the same counties appeared on a similar list comparing the 2016 and 2020 elections (Henderson, Buncombe, and Robeson, for example). As a whole, the 2024 election didn't represent "new" partisan patterns, but instead represented more of the same.

5. That Constitutional Amendment Sure Was Popular.

Prior to last Tuesday, North Carolinians had passed 36 Amendments to the state constitution since its passing. We can now that make 37.

 

 The ballot item read as follows:

 

Constitutional amendment to provide that only a citizen of the United States who is 18 years of age and otherwise possessing the qualifications for voting shall be entitled to vote at any election in this State.

Constitutional amendments are usually popular--only a handful have failed. But this one was unusually popular. 

Here's a list of counties where it failed: Orange and Durham. That's the list. 

It passed with 78 percent of the vote statewide. It even passed with 66 percent of the vote in Buncombe County, and 70 percent of the vote in Mecklenburg County. In an era with few landslides, it was a landslide.

What's notable about this amendment isn't just that it passed in 98/100 counties, but that similar measures passed across the country.

In Idaho: 68% support.

In Iowa: 76% support.

In Kentucky: 62% support

In Oklahoma 81% support

In South Carolina: 86% support

In Wisconsin: 70% support

More evidence that politics in North Carolina is nationalized.

I know last week feels like a year ago, but it's only been a week. And until canvass is over, all of these results are unofficial. So--expect more to follow when it's all official.

Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. He's on Twitter, Threads, and Blue Sky at @chriscooperwcu. Yes, that's too many accounts.