Trump Wins Battleground North Carolina

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North Carolina is the first battleground state to be called.

After holding four rallies over a three-day stretch in North Carolina leading to Election Day, former President Donald Trump has won the battleground state and its 16 electoral votes, according to The Associated Press, which called the race at 11:19 p.m.

In 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democrat presidential candidate to win North Carolina in 30 years. Trump prevailed in 2016 and then edged candidate Joe Biden by 1.3 percent of the vote in 2020.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who has served as governor since 2017, campaigned in Raleigh with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday—as did Attorney General Josh Stein, who ran for governor against Republican nominee Mark Robinson. The Associated Press called the race for Stein at 9:15 p.m.

A FiveThirtyEight average of polls on Oct. 30 showed Trump with a slight lead over Harris at 48.3 percent to 47.2 percent.

The western portion of the state was severely impacted by flooding and mudslides from Hurricane Helene, displacing many residents.

The mountains of western North Carolina are considered a Republican stronghold.

The 25 counties that compose the disaster area have 1.3 million registered voters. In 2020, Trump won 604,119 votes to Joe Biden’s 356,902 votes in those counties, according to political analyst Ray Bonifay, who highlighted the importance of the region in an Oct. 18 commentary on RealClearPolitics.

On the eve of Election Day, Trump held a 1.3 percent lead over Harris in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.

Early voting was a key factor in North Carolina’s general election.

In-person early voting started in all 100 counties on Oct. 17 and ended on Nov. 2 at 3 p.m.

The State Board of Elections reported that more than 4.2 million residents cast early voting ballots—a record number.

Turnout in the 25 western North Carolina counties impacted by Hurricane Helene was 58.9 percent—around 2 percent higher than the statewide total, the state board said.

At a rally in Kinston over the weekend, Trump praised the people who voted early in areas where homes and businesses were swept away by mudslides and flooding from Helene.

“Many of these people don’t even have a house anymore. The devastation is like something never seen. It’s largely areas where people like Trump that were affected, and even with all of that devastation, they turned out in record numbers early,” Trump said.

“The people of your state, the people of North Carolina, are amazing. I thought we would get 50 percent of the number that voted in 2020. [Instead] they broke the record,” he added.

Amid the surge of Republican early voters, the Harris campaign canceled $2 million in ad reservations in North Carolina media markets on Oct. 29, according to AdImpact. The previous day, the campaign reserved $2.7 million for an ad blitz.

The Carolina Journal reported that Harris was not abandoning the state, but that she was shifting her focus to the Raleigh-Durham market.

Last week, a day after Biden appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage,” Harris urged Americans to “stop pointing fingers at each other” during a campaign stop in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Oct. 30.

At the same time Harris delivered her address, Trump held a rally in Rocky Mount, which is located around 54 miles east of the state’s capital city.

He called his supporters the “heart and soul” of the country and said that “this election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of gross incompetence and failure, or whether we’ll begin the greatest four years of the history of our country.”

Harris courted conservatives who are reluctant to support the former president.

“We know we have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who has been trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” Harris said.

Harris added that she will “represent all Americans, including those who don’t vote for me” and that “the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.”

On Monday morning, Trump held a rally at Dorton Arena in Raleigh on the state fairgrounds where he also hosted his last North Carolina appearance in 2016.

He reflected that he was in the midst of his final North Carolina rally as a presidential candidate but expressed optimism of a victory.

“Think of this: I won’t be doing this anymore with North Carolina,” he said. “And I won’t be doing this anymore. This will be our final moment, but the more exciting moment is going to begin,” Trump told the crowd.

“These that we’ve had together, these really were just to create what we’ll hopefully create tomorrow, which is we’re going to make America great again,” Trump said. “So we’ll have many meetings, but we won’t have rally meetings. Maybe we’ll rally in that we’ll rally in our success.”