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Last week, I wrote about the case for Democratic optimism in North Carolina. This week, I present its counter.
Between 1898 and 2010, North Carolina Democrats controlled the state legislature for an uninterrupted 112 years. Partly, this dominance resulted from the fluke of white supremacy: A party trending toward Northern liberalism carried the legacy of the Civil War. But even after segregation justly fell into the dustbin, Democrats continued to dominate the General Assembly on the strength of resourceful political strategies and the deep appeal of public education. By the end of the era, Democratic establishmentarians believed they could never lose their majority.
They demonstrated this arrogance by refusing to pass a nonpartisan redistricting bill. Believing they would never need an insurance policy against future Republican majorities, state Senate Democrats, led by venerable old bulls from eastern North Carolina, nearly expelled a political consultant for suggesting the legislature place redistricting in the hands of neutral experts.
This myopia has cost the party profoundly. Because since Republicans swept the legislative elections during the Tea Party wave of 2010, extremely aggressive gerrymandering has all but locked the party out of power.
This is where many Democrats would like the story to stop. A serendipitous landslide leads to untrammeled redistricting power, and Republicans thwart the rightful aspirations of Democrats to gain a legislative majority. But the reality is far less comforting.
Since 2010, Republicans have won the popular vote for both houses of the legislature in all but one election, six out of the eight Council of State offices have switched into Republican hands and Democrats have not won a single statewide election for president or U.S. Senate. Republicans have established an iron grip on state politics, aided no doubt by authoritarian tactics and structures, but also, unquestionably, won at the ballot box.
That Democrats are struggling is incontrovertible, and it’s imperative for North Carolinians who value justice and democracy to understand why. I can see two principal reasons.
Both are related to North Carolina’s distinctive demographic profile and the ways in which the state both reflects, and deviates from, the national political norm. To put it succinctly, Republicans have consolidated control over the regions that naturally favor them and the people who naturally favor Democrats are not turning out to vote.
Democrats, it often appears, are crippled outside the state’s urban cores. There’s a wrinkle in this narrative in the form of persistent Democratic strength in northeastern North Carolina, but even in the so-called Black Belt, Democratic margins have begun to erode.
Elsewhere in rural and exurban North Carolina, Republicans predominate. Democrats routinely win most of their votes in fewer than 10 densely populated urban counties, with Republicans wielding effectively total dominance in the mountains, the rural Piedmont and the Coastal Plain. Because North Carolina is roughly 40% rural and the exurbs also contain rich troves of votes, this geographic imbalance heavily redounds to the benefit of right-wing Republicans.
Democrats are receiving less than 25% of the vote in countless rural counties. And while their success in the urban cores has kept them from the edge of oblivion, they struggle to get their remaining base to vote at rates competitive with the fervent Trumpers in the GOP camp.
African American turnout, the foundation of any Democratic victory, accounted for 17% of overall voter turnout in 2022 even though Black people make up 22% of registered voters in the state. This was the lowest level of Black turnout the state had seen since 2006. Combining their geographic and demographic challenges, Democrats in diverse Mecklenburg County persistently lag in the area of voter turnout. If turnout in Mecklenburg County had equaled that of comparably-sized Wake, Kay Hagan would have won her 2014 Senate race and Cheri Beasley would have been much more competitive against Ted Budd.
Furthermore, both of these challenges appear to be “sticky.” There’s clearly a “secular trend” — meaning that it doesn’t reflect cyclical changes — toward lower African American turnout in the state. And rural North Carolina has trended Republican so rapidly and so consistently that even Anson County went Republican for the first time ever.
Depressing? Certainly, but intrepid party leadership can solve any conundrum. In 2008, the North Carolina Republican Party appeared doomed by demography, but Tom Fetzer, Thom Tillis and Paul Stam organized a ferocious campaign to take back the state.
It worked for Republicans, and Democrats may have the leader in 25-year-old Anderson Clayton who can make that magic reappear in the stately old headquarters on Hillsborough Street.
Alexander H. Jones is a policy analyst with Carolina Forward. He lives in Carrboro. Have feedback? Reach him at alex@carolinaforward.org.
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