GREENSBORO, North Carolina — Republicans have had reason to worry about North Carolina since Kamala Harris dramatically closed the polling gap two months ago.
But just a handful of days into early voting, Donald Trump has the GOP here convinced he’s all but stamped her out.
At his rally Tuesday night, Trump said as much — declaring that Harris was “cratering in the polls,” and claiming “she’s sleeping” because she had no public campaign events scheduled that day.
And while the polls remain tight in North Carolina, and Trump frequently exaggerates his standing in public surveys, early voting data in recent days has Republicans breathing easier.
Turnout from Black voters, a reliably Democratic demographic, is down compared to this point four years ago, though some Democrats have said it’s a mistake to compare early voting turnout this year to 2020, noting the upheaval caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. And GOP early voting is in a better place than in 2020 — when Trump was telling his supporters not to vote early. This time, Trump rallies throughout the summer and fall in North Carolina and every other swing state have featured large signs urging supporters to vote early. On Tuesday, Trump announced that he would cast his ballot early.
“He’s trying to put the nail in the coffin,” said Hal Weatherman, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, who served as chief of staff for former Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) and former Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. “I’ve run 15 campaigns in North Carolina over a 27-year career. I can tell when a man is trying to drive a nail in the coffin.”
Trump’s rally Tuesday in the central part of the state came on the heels of three campaign stops the previous day, underscoring the importance of a place Trump has twice won, and months ago seemed on track for a nearly effortless victory.
Polling averages now show the race here exceptionally tight, with Trump holding a narrow lead over Harris, who has sought to make inroads with the state’s suburban, college-educated voters, as well as voters of color.
The early voting data has come as a relief to the GOP. One prominent Republican in the state, granted anonymity to speak freely, predicted Trump will be able to focus elsewhere in the final two weeks because “the ground has shifted here in North Carolina.”
A Harris campaign official, granted anonymity to speak freely about the state of the race here, said “Trump is cherrypicking early vote data,” while claiming that internal Harris campaign data shows Trump “has consequential slippage with suburban women voters” in the state compared to 2020. The official also noted an uptick in early voting turnout in the Raleigh and Greensboro areas, “both key parts of our path to victory in the state.”
Trump, meanwhile, was taunting Harris on stage, after drawing criticism earlier Tuesday for seeming to invoke a racist stereotype in calling her “lazy as hell.”
“How do you take a day off? Fourteen days,” Trump said of the time left until Election Day, “you don’t take a day off … I heard it today, and she’s taking another day off tomorrow. What the hell?”
After holding events on Monday with Liz Cheney in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris sat for interviews with NBC and Telemundo on Tuesday, and has no campaign events scheduled before her town hall Wednesday evening with CNN.
“We now have five days of early voting data, and so what we’re seeing is that Republicans are in a stronger position than they’ve ever been historically,” said Jason Simmons, chair of the North Carolina Republican Party.
Republicans “have out voted, out performed” Democrats during two of those five days, Simmons said. At this point in 2020, “they held a 19 point advantage.” Today, Simmons said, the Democratic advantage after five days of early voting is 1 point.
“When you’re looking at just the early voting data,” Simmons said, “it continues to show that Republicans are over performing and Democrats are underperforming.”
It’s not a sign Democrats want to see. At least 67,000 fewer Black voters have cast ballots so far compared to this point in 2020, noted North Carolina Democratic consultant Thomas Mills, calling it “a huge deficit that Democrats should be scrambling to address,” and urging them to increase money and time spent on mobilizing Black voters to the polls here.
Wearing a T-shirt that read, “Yes I’m a Black Trump girl. Get over it,” Crystal Clark, 59, of Burlington, said she’s supporting Trump over Harris because “we need to be voting on our economy, the safety of America, jobs.”
“What you’re going to do for my 401K that’s, like, slumped out,” Clark said. “What are you going to do for the cost of all the food that we got going on right now, gas prices, that sort of thing?”
Including Trump’s visit on Monday to see western North Carolina hurricane damage, a rally in Greenville that afternoon, and an address to faith leaders in Concord that evening, Trump has held four campaign stops here in just two days, a sign that his campaign still saw vulnerabilities in the state. Since Labor Day, North Carolina is the state where the Trump campaign has spent the second most on advertising, according to AdImpact, and the ad tracking service shows Trump almost completely matching the $34 million Harris has spent on ads here during that time.
Trump, aware of the close margins here and in other swing states, has sought to distance himself from the state’s Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson. Despite enthusiastically endorsing Robinson earlier this year in this very city, and previously praising him as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” Trump has not campaigned with Robinson since news broke last month that he allegedly made a number of lewd posts on pornographic online forums. Robinson has denied he was the one behind the comments. Though the rally Tuesday was held in Robinson’s hometown — and other Republican candidates and officials took the stage to speak — Robinson was nowhere to be seen.
Asked by POLITICO on Monday whether North Carolina voters should support Robinson for governor, Trump declined to take a position, saying he is “not familiar” with the state of the race.
“I haven’t seen it,” he added.
Before the Trump rally Tuesday, Weatherman dismissed the question of whether it was a smart strategy for Trump to keep his distance from Robinson, calling the scandal surrounding him “crap you guys dig up.”
“Mark’s my running mate, and I’m proud to run with him,” Weatherman said.
Questions that remain here are how much the GOP early vote will affect the party’s vote share on Election Day, as well as the overall impact of Hurricane Helene on the state. Counties in the western part of the state that were impacted have so far varied significantly on how early vote turnout has compared with four years ago, with some counties being lower and others slightly outperforming.
Clark, who has voted Republican in recent election cycles, said a number of her relatives, lifelong Democrats, are supporting Harris — “they’re just going to stick with it, whether it’s good or not.”
“Some people don’t like the personality,” Clark said of Trump. “We don’t have to marry the man, just, you know, he’s our president and he needs to protect America. And I do not see the Democrats doing that at all.”
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