MSNBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki broke down the tight race between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in North Carolina on Wednesday.
Trump won North Carolina 49.9% to 48.6% against President Joe Biden and 49.8% to 46.2% against former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Kornacki’s data showed. He said on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports” that no significant changes have to be made ahead of the 2024 election in order for Democrats to have a chance of winning the state.
“North Carolina’s been close … Take a look back at 2016, Donald Trump carried the state, it was by about three and a half points. You could see Democrats erased more than half of that Trump margin from 2016 in 2020, brought it down to just about a 75,000 vote difference between Trump and Biden in 2020. So, we’re talking about not huge changes needed here for Democrats to actually flip the state,” Kornacki said.
MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki breaks down tight race in North Carolina where Trump won twice pic.twitter.com/Cn5NgpTDWH
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Kornacki said Democrats “draw hope” from urban areas and densely populated suburbs as they are becoming more Democratic, while rural areas are becoming increasingly more Republican. He pointed to Wake County, which Biden won 62.3% to 35.8% in 2020, and where Clinton and former President Barack Obama witnessed overwhelming victories.
“So what Democrats see is these are big population centers, importantly, that are growing. They’re gaining population and they’re becoming more Democratic,” Kornacki continued.
Kornacki then explained that the several rural, Republican-leaning counties in the state have led to Republican victories in past elections, pointing to the small Surry County, where Trump overwhelmingly won 75.2% to 23.8% in 2020. The county’s Republican victory increased from a 28-point lead in 2008 to a 52-point lead that year.
The MSNBC correspondent mentioned a number of counties with majority African American populations went for Biden in 2020, but were not equal to Obama’s victories in those counties.
“That might be the key variable when you talk about these two major forces driving politics in North Carolina. Can Kamala Harris and the Democrats get back more to that Obama level in these counties than say Biden did in 2020 or Hillary Clinton did in 2016. That, in a margin this small, could make a big difference,” Kornacki said.
Trump narrowly leads in North Carolina 45.8% to 45.5% against Harris as of Wednesday, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign on Friday and endorsed Trump in order to be removed from swing state ballots. It may be too late for Kennedy to be removed from the North Carolina ballot as its first absentee ballots are set to be sent out on Sept. 6, according to CBS News.
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