Friday, January 31, 2025

The 2024 Election in the U.S. South

 

by Christopher Cooper

In recent decades the United States South has emerged as the most rock-ribbed Republican region in the country, but the 2020 election brought signs that the Republican stranglehold might be loosening. In those elections, Joe Biden won two southern states: Georgia and Virginia. In addition, voters in Georgia sent Democrats to the US Senate, and Democrat Roy Cooper was re-elected as governor of North Carolina. With the 2024 elections now behind us, what do the results tell us about the Democratic Party’s appeal in the US South?

 Gibbs Knotts and I addressed this question in the London School of Economics United States Politics and Policy blog and we thought some of the readers of Old North State Politics might be interested. Please check it out.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2025/01/29/the-2024-elections-how-the-democrats-hopes-were-dashed-in-the-us-south/ 

_______

Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His book, Anatomy of a Purple State, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press. H. Gibbs Knotts is Provost and Professor of Political Science at Coastal Carolina University. His most recent book (co-authored with Jordan Ragusa) is First in the South: Why South Carolina's Presidential Primary Maters.

Monday, January 20, 2025

Analysis of Voters Challenged by Justice Griffin Part II

 by Christopher Cooper

On January 13, 2025 I wrote an analysis of the partisan and demographic patterns of the approximately 60,000 North Carolinians whose ballots are being challenged by Justice Griffin because of" incomplete voter registration." That analysis can be found here.

Since then, Justice Griffin has filed a brief with the North Carolina State Supreme Court where he outlines his case in more detail, along with his preferred remedy. In that brief, he explains that, in addition to the 60,723 voters with "incomplete voter registration," that I analyzed before, he is focusing his challenge on two additional groups of voters: (1) 267 "never residents" and (2) 5,509 "overseas voters without photo ID." 

As a result, I wrote an analysis of these groups of voters--available here

---

Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His book, Anatomy of a Purple State, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

An Analysis of Challenged Voters in the 2024 NC Supreme Court Justice Election

 by Christopher Cooper

As the fight over approximately 60,000 challenged ballots in North Carolina's Supreme Court Election makes its way through the legal system, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at the challenges to determine whether (and if so, how) challenged voter differ from the overall pool of people who cast a vote in November, 2024 in North Carolina.

Because the analysis includes a lot of tables that can look wonky when put into blogger, I put them in a pdf (accessible here). 

---

Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His book, Anatomy of a Purple State, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press.