The 2024 Swing States: North Carolina Could Sway the 2024 Election | Elections

North Carolina has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in just about every election over the past several decades.

But will it be a battleground in November? Pundits – and the president – think so, due at least in part to the coastal state’s razor-thin margins of victory in recent presidential contests.

A swing state, according to a literal definition, is one that’s “considered to play a key role in the outcome of presidential elections” and where candidates of both the Democratic and Republican parties “have similar levels of support.” The group of such states each presidential cycle is often similar, although variations can occur due to factors like changing demographics and turnout. Georgia, for example, recently swung into the swing state category in the wake of President Joe Biden’s surprising win in 2020 and other lower-ticket Democratic victories.

Democrats – looking back at former President Trump’s narrow victory in North Carolina in 2020 – hope the state can be the Georgia of the 2024 election. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made the Tar Heel State the last stop on a March tour of battleground states after the State of the Union. But some GOP officials insist Biden will be no match for Trump, who himself visited the state for a rally in early March. In January, U.S. News handicapped North Carolina as “lean Republican” for the 2024 presidential election.

Here’s everything you need to know about North Carolina, which was No. 17 in the most recent Best States rankings by U.S. News, as a 2024 battleground.

While the state is often referred to as “purple,” its voters have only chosen two Democratic presidential candidates since the early 1970s: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008.

North Carolina, however, was consistently blue earlier in the 20th century, and the margins between Democratic and Republican candidates have been smaller in recent elections. The state’s 16 electoral votes put it in the top 10 among all states. It is less of a bellwether compared to other swing states, but eight of the last 12 North Carolina winners ultimately ended up in the White House.

Biden and Harris’ late-March Tar Heel State visit focused on health care and Trump’s promises to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which Biden’s former boss, Obama, signed into law 14 years ago. The American Rescue Plan, a COVID-19 pandemic recovery measure that was a key legislative win for Biden, included financial incentives for states to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income residents. North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper used that funding to persuade Republican lawmakers to support his plan, and more than 600,000 residents are expected to qualify, according to The Associated Press.

In the early March rally, Trump highlighted not health care but rather one of his favorite campaign subjects: immigration. The former president described the southern border as an “open and gushing wound” and said “migrant crime” is a new problem under Biden, USA Today reported. Trump won the North Carolina GOP primary handily on Super Tuesday.

Trump won the state by just 1.3 percentage points in 2020. He also carried it – by a wider but still relatively small margin – in 2016 against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

About 62% of North Carolina’s population is non-Hispanic white. The state also has a sizable Black or African American population (22.2%) and Hispanic population (10.5%), and it will be crucial for the Biden-Harris campaign to mobilize both groups if it wants to win the state.

Women – another pivotal voting bloc – comprise 51% of North Carolina’s population. Biden has been polling stronger with women voters than he has been otherwise against Trump.

The independent vote also remains important both in North Carolina and nationally. A plurality of the state’s registered voters are unaffiliated (36.11%), while 32.93% are members of the Democratic Party and 30.28% are registered with the Republican Party, according to the Independent Voter Project.

Recent polling paints slightly different pictures of what North Carolinians care about the most. A March survey from Marist College found that more than a quarter (26%) of residents say preserving democracy is top of mind regarding the November election. The same percentage chose inflation, while 21% cited immigration.

Meanwhile, a February survey from Emerson College Polling and The Hill noted the economy as the top issue for 36% of voters, followed by health care (14%), education (12%), immigration (10%), housing affordability (8%), crime (7%), threats to democracy (6%) and abortion access (5%).

The Economy: In his State of the Union address, Biden spoke of America’s “comeback” – one that he said includes “building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.”

“I inherited an economy that was on the brink,” he said, while also touting that “more people have health insurance today than ever before.”

Trump has indicated on his social media platform that recent stock market gains should be credited to him, and that “EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE.”

“President Trump’s vision for America’s economic revival is lower taxes, bigger paychecks, and more jobs for American workers,” his campaign website says, also giving Trump credit for previously low unemployment rates among Black and Hispanic Americans.

Threats to Democracy: Biden has made threats to democracy a focus of his campaign, referencing the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt in 2021 during his March address to Congress and saying “democracy must be defended.”

Trump has repeated false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and has expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He often attacks the media, frequently using the term “fake news.”

Immigration: The president has become more aggressive in his messaging about immigration, which has been called a threat to his reelection prospects. He noted in the State of the Union efforts to pass a bipartisan immigration reform bill, which was later torpedoed in Congress amid opposition from Trump. But Biden also was criticized by progressives and immigration advocates for using the term “illegal” in a reference to the alleged killer of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

Trump has long made immigration a big part of his platform, recently saying migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” – language that Biden called out in his address to Congress. The former president also has vowed to launch a massive deportation effort if reelected.

Health Care: Biden in the State of the Union touted efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs and championed the Affordable Care Act, which is also referred to as Obamacare, as “still a very big deal.” “Over 100 million of you can no longer be denied health insurance because of a preexisting condition,” he said.

During Trump’s presidency, congressional Republicans unsuccessfully tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. In November, Trump said on social media that he wants to “replace” it.

“Obamacare Sucks!!!” he wrote.

The Marist Poll showed Trump having a 51%-48% lead over Biden in North Carolina, with 1% undecided. With third party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. included, the difference changed to 46%-43% in favor of Trump, and 11% supporting Kennedy. Trump had a 6-point advantage over Biden among independent voters, while the president had a large lead among Black voters. But the 79% of Black voters surveyed who stood with Biden is down from the 92% who supported him nationally in 2020, according to Marist College.

Emerson College’s poll from February also had Trump with a 3-point lead (47%-44%) over Biden, but a larger share of voters (10%) undecided. Biden’s deficit grew to 9 percentage points with third party candidates Kennedy, Cornel West and Jill Stein on the ballot.

With Cooper term-limited, North Carolina’s gubernatorial race is between Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein. Robinson, a strong supporter of Trump and vice versa, has a history of controversial statements on issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, school shootings and the #MeToo movement, and Democrats will argue that he’s too polarizing to lead a purple state like North Carolina. Stein held a 2-point lead over Robinson in the March Marist Poll, with 3% of respondents undecided.