Some Factors To Watch Now that We Have Harris-Walz versus Trump-Vance

By Michael Bitzer

As promised, now that Kamala Harris has selected Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, here are some thoughts/pondering about North Carolina and what to expect over the next several months. 

Three things that I'll be watching unfold: what strategy from both camps are focused on the Trump-Cooper 2020 precincts; what is voter enthusiasm, i.e. turnout, like; and what are the campaigns' message framing, especially on social media? 

The Trump-Cooper Swing Precincts of NC

Based on some precinct analysis from the 2020 general election, if we think about the Trump-Cooper kind of voter, two-thirds of those split-ticket precincts are in the state's urban suburbs and rural counties.

After Two Weeks, A Data Dive Into the Harris Effect on NC Voter Registration

By Michael Bitzer

As I post this on Tuesday, August 6, we have the great mystery solved of who Kamala Harris will pick as her vice presidential nominee: Minnesota governor Tim Walz. I'm sure my colleagues and I will have more to say about the finalized Democratic ticket against the Trump-Vance Republican ticket in the future, but I wanted to post some further information on what we've seen in North Carolina politics over the past two weeks. 

As my colleague Chris Cooper has noted, it appears there's a some kind of "Harris Effect" on NC voter registration. In the two weeks post Biden's departure and Harris's elevation to be the Democratic presidential nominee, Chris notes that registration for Democrats has surpassed Republicans, whereas Republicans were above Democrats in the two weeks prior to the July 21 announcement. 

As a deeper dive, I posted on Bluesky & Twitter/X some further analysis of the trends in voter registration for the month of July, specifically looking at the period July 6 (the first Saturday of the month that the NC State Board of Elections gave us the weekly update on voter registration) through August 2 (to conclude the analysis). 

To conduct this analysis, I merged the July 6 with the August 2 NC voter registration data via the NCID 'key' for each voter (a unique identifier that stays with the voter) and then separated out the voters who were not registered on July 6 but were registered on August 2. That pool of voters is 34,180 new NC registered voters, with the following daily numbers in the period.

July 6 through August 2 NC Voter Registrations by Day

Five Weeks that Felt Like Five Years: Some Reflections on Where We Are and Heading in 2024's Election

By Michael Bitzer

For most academics, summer is a time to decompress and get caught up: on readings, maybe some research, prepping new material for the upcoming academic year's classes. 

That's for most academics. For those of us in political science, especially who study American politics, this notion of a "summer break" has yet to materialize, and as I write this blog entry on July 31, it's likely not going to materialize.

This past month--really since June 27 and the first presidential debate--has felt like it's been five years of news wrapped up in five weeks. And the eight-day stretch from the attempted assassination on former president Trump through the RNC to Biden's bow-out and Harris's juggernaut nomination left a lot of us just gasping for air from all of the 'breaking news.' 

And now, August. 

Was there a "Harris Effect" that Spiked Democratic Party Registration in NC? Evidence After One Week

By Christopher Cooper

As you certainly know, President Joe Biden announced last Sunday that he would withdraw from the 2024 Presidential election and endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee. By and large, Democrats responded to this news with something that has become a scarce resource in the Democratic Party--excitement. 

Although this feeling of hope is promising for Democrats, there is no Electoral College for excitement and votes don't count more for people who are super-pumped to cast them. For excitement to matter, it must translate to votes.

It's too soon to count votes, so our best early signs of whether Democrats can capitalize on this excitement are fundraising and party registration. There's no question that the Biden-Harris switch has inspired a fundraising bonanza--including perhaps the largest one day haul in U.S. history. 

But what about party registrations? Some evidence suggests that the Biden-Harris switch promoted massive increases in Democratic voter registration--one report indicates that it was the largest two day number of voter registrations this electoral cycle. One week in, is the "Harris effect" evident in North Carolina voter registrations? Using publicly available data, I tried to find out.

About the Veepstakes

by Christopher Cooper

In the last few days, coverage of the veepstakes (the nerdy play on words to describe the battle over who will become Harris' choice for Vice President) has suggested: It's Shapiro or Kelly, it's down to 12, it's down to 8, Mayor Pete is making a move, seems likely to be Beshear, it's Kelly or Walz, Whitmer is out, Whitmer is in, it will be someone with executive experience, and Cooper or Kelly will get the nod. 

It's almost like no one knows.* 

The Nexis of Mobilization & Engaged (or lack thereof) Voters

By Michael Bitzer

As we get into the summer lull of the general campaign before the unprecedented first presidential debate, followed by the party conventions (along with the Olympics in between the conventions), watchers of American politics are being bombarded by poll after poll about where various races stand. 

In other words, it's the dog days of summer and horserace polls that only tell us so much several months out from the general election. 

But one thing that has struck me is the early focus on who will likely be '2024 voters' and how the two parties (and other parties as well) will seek to motivate, mobilize, and get their voters--both the diehard engaged and those 'disengaged'--to November's polls.

In North Carolina, for political analysts and (especially) political operatives and campaigns, data can tell us which voters have been 'consistent' participants in their voting habits (thus, what we could describe as engaged voters), as opposed to those who are registered, but for whatever reason, just don't show up--what the AP focused on in a recent article on disengaged voters in the Old North State. 

One recent example in North Carolina is enlightening as to the cause and effect when it comes to voters who cast ballots--or more importantly, don't mobilize to cast a ballot. 

The Tendency & Tumble of Split Ticket Voting in North Carolina

By Michael Bitzer

I recently joined WUNC's Due South to talk about ticket-splitting voters, especially in North Carolina. The dynamic of ticket-splitting is often associated with how presidential and congressional candidates do within a district: we may hear of a Biden-Republican congressional representative district, or a Trump-Democratic district as a sign of the voters willing to divide their votes for different parties on the same ballot. We may also hear about a 'split' in how a state votes for president (for one party) and a U.S. Senate seat (for the other party).

But with North Carolina being one of eleven states that holds a gubernatorial election in a presidential election year, those of us who study NC politics have a natural experiment that lends itself to studying the impact of split-ticket, or the opposite dynamic of straight-ticket, voting on a state-wide scale.

As an example of this bi-polar partisan behavior, Greene County demonstrates what North Carolina experienced at the start of the 21st Century and the changes leading up to this year. In 2000's election, Greene County gave Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush 57.5 percent of its vote, but immediately below on the ballot, Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Vinroot got only 40.4 percent of the vote--a difference of 17 percentage points, making it one of seven counties with a 17 point or greater difference between the GOP presidential and gubernatorial two-party vote percentages.

The Politics of Masking

By Todd Collins

Editor’s note: with the visibility regarding House Bill 237, the 'mask bill' that passed the North Carolina State Senate this week and sent to the State House, ONSP asked Dr. Todd Collins (a licensed attorney and legal/political scholar with extensive experience in the courtroom and the classroom) to offer his analysis on the bill. His views do not represent the opinions of his home academic institution.

Not too long ago the only political discussions about face coverings surrounded the “mask index.”  If you aren’t familiar, this is a way to predict the presidential election based on which candidate’s Halloween mask sells the most before an election.  

As the legend goes, this method has correctly predicted every election outcome since Ronald Reagan.  George W. Bush masks were the bigger sellers in 2000 and 2004, Obama masks outsold his Republican rivals in 2008 and 2012, and we saw more Donald Trump faces than Hillary Clinton’s on October 31, 2016.

Of course, national mask sells are really hard to quantify, so I wouldn’t make a parlay bet on the 2024 election based on statistics from Spencer’s Gifts.  But one thing that is clear is that masks have indeed become a recent “Hot Topic” (and yes, that’s two old-school mall store references in one paragraph if you’re keeping score).

Runoff Rundown

By Christopher Cooper

There was a second primary in North Carolina on May 14 for the Republican Auditor, Lieutenant Governor and NC-13 races (yes, there were a couple of runoffs for important local races too, but I'm just discussing the congressional and statewide here). So, what happened?

Turnout

Voter turnout in the second primary was somewhere between terrible and awful. Statewide, fewer than 3 percent of all eligible voters cast a vote. 

If you compare the number of people who cast a vote in the first primary for that office to the number who cast a vote in the second primary, things don't look much better. Turnout for the Republican Auditor second primary was ~14.5% of the first primary, Republican Lieutenant Governor was about 14% of original turnout and Republican 13th Congressional District was about 25.7% of original turnout.

Via The Assembly: The Short Life and Quiet Death of Ranked-Choice Voting in North Carolina

With the second primary (run-off) primary begin held tomorrow (May 14), Dr. Chris Cooper takes a look at the use of a voting technique that may have avoided the use of a run-off election: ranked-choice voting.

Cooper details ranked-choice voting's brief history and quiet death at The Assembly at: https://www.theassemblync.com/politics/elections/ranked-choice-votingnorth-carolina-elections/