The Populist Party and the Republican Party — known nationally as the Farmer’s Alliance — cooperated in state and federal elections from 1894 to the beginning of the Jim Crow era. While under Republican-Populist control, the N.C. General Assembly voted to increase ballot access for Black voters in 1895.
But it wasn’t long until the state’s electoral landscape drastically changed again.
In 1898, Democrats recaptured the General Assembly during the general election and days after led the Wilmington Coup, a race riot led by many former Confederates that left 60 Black North Carolinians dead.
Two years after, Democrats put a constitutional amendment on the ballot mandating a poll tax and a literacy test. Watson said this weakened the power of the Republican Party’s voter base and began a long trend of voter disenfranchisement in the state.
Fast forward to the Republican-Democratic party shift and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Watson, now in his 80s, said that people his age will never forget that the modern N.C. Republican Party was founded on a silent reaction against the Civil Rights Movement.
Watson has served as an expert witness for a state supreme court case on gerrymandering, acted as a member of the University’s Faculty Council and still sits on a number of state historical boards. He’s observed the state’s political maps and voting trends ebb and flow over the years.
With debates on Voter I.D. and this year’s constitutional amendment around naturalized citizens, certain North Carolinians have struggled with access to the polls in decades past. But, the political coalitions and voting blocks that led Carter and Obama to victory in the state are still present.
“That kind of change has crept in over the last generation, accelerated by things like the riots of the 1960s and so on,” Watson said.
Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, said that many times people conflate the idea of a swing state with political competition. Because North Carolina is the only “swing” state that Trump won in 2020, Bitzer said the state has a unique political environment that polls can't quite capture. Most political precincts in North Carolina are overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic — when you combine these areas, you get a roughly 51-49 state.
“The margin of victory for the presidential race is probably going to be within the margin of error of all the polls leading into the election,” he said.
Watson said that the “contagion” of outsiders moving to North Carolina doesn’t mean the state is going to go bluer. He said that people from places like New York and New Jersey who move to the South for lower cost of living often think that their home states are too liberal.
In the late 1970s, Ferrel Guillory, the founder of the Program on Public Life at UNC, found that North Carolina was the state with the lowest proportion of out-of-state births in the country while combing through the U.S. Census for an upcoming book. As of 2018, 44 percent of N.C. residents were born out-of-state.
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“From about the 1800s to the 1980s, nobody moved to North Carolina — everybody moved out,” Watson said.
Since 2020, the metropolitan population of the Triangle alone has grown more than five percent. Numerous news outlets and magazines have labeled the state as a top area to move to because of lower cost of living and job opportunities in the Research Triangle and other commercial centers. There’s been a demographic change across the state as a whole, too. According to the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management, the Hispanic population has been the fastest growing demographic in the state since 1990.
The state is experiencing a kind-of political reckoning with two-term Democratic Governor Roy Cooper exiting office and multiple contentious state races, like Michele Morrow’s controversial bid for superintendent of Public Instruction. But, Bitzer said that party turn-out rates are what helps keep the state federally Republican. In 2020, 75 percent of registered Democrats voted in the general election, while registered Republicans were at 81 percent. Bitzer also said that the demographic of Black men that helped Obama win the state in 2008 have had lower turnout rates in years since.
“Prior to 2000 there wasn't early voting, there have been a lot of structural changes making it easier to vote,” Gerry Cohen said.
Cohen, a member of the Wake County Board of Elections, has spent countless election seasons past mobilizing voters across the state. He said he expects voter turnout to be high this year because of the money spent by both parties on door-to-door campaigning, advertisements and get-out-the-vote efforts.
“We’ve had Democratic governors almost continuously for 30 years or more, other than Pat McCrory,” Cohen said. “It’s purple to the extent that Democrats can carry state offices but have had trouble with federal offices.”
Right now, political polling site FiveThirtyEight has reported three major polls from Quinnipiac University and Redfield & Wilton Strategies that show either Harris and Trump gaining the amount of the vote or Harris winning. News outlets and polls are continuing to label North Carolina as a swing state and campaigns will continue to court its voters until Nov. 5.
Still, North Carolina is a toss-up.
“We are a 51-49 Democratic state, so we're kind of on the knife's edge in terms of competitiveness,” Bitzer said. “I think based on the polling, it is really a coin toss at this point.”
@wslivingston_
Walker LivingstonWalker Livingston is the 2024 enterprise managing editor at The Daily Tar Heel. She has previously served as summer city & state editor and assistant city & state editor. Walker is a sophomore pursuing a double major in journalism and media and American studies, with a minor in data science.
