Since 2000, Florida has been the most coveted swing state in the Southeast, whether the stakes are a Presidential race or pivotal midterms. While Democrats still dominate a few Florida counties, recent trends, including a Republican registration advantage, indicate that Sunshine State’s shade of red has darkened since Governor Ron DeSantis was elected in 2018. During that same timespan, Georgia has seen two Senate seats flip from red to blue, and North Carolina’s Democratic governor Roy Cooper was re-elected for a second term.
North Carolina Voter Demographic Trends:
The most recent US Census and other data shows that Charlotte and Raleigh among the fastest growing cities in the country during the past year. While it’s true that Florida also touts several cities among the top 10 for fastest growth, its new residents primarily consist of retirees relocating to Sarasota on the gulf coast, and Melbourne on the Atlantic cost. Charlotte and Raleigh attract young professionals, particularly in academic research careers that heavily rely on federal grants. Florida’s implants are typically seniors, most of whom are socially conservative and deeply committed to long-held voting habits. When you combine the influx of more senior citizen voters with South Florida Hispanics shifting their support to Republicans (including two Congressional seats that flipped red in 2020), North Carolina much more viable for Democrats in the near term.
Need more proof that Democrats are gaining ground in the Tar Heel state? Take a look at turnout in the 2020 election. Biden carried eight of North Carolina’s ten largest counties (losing only the Charlotte-area suburban counties of Union and Gaston), and overperformed Obama’s 2008 margin in the six largest: Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Durham, and Buncombe, in which he received 62%, 67%, 61%, 56%, 80%, and 60% of the vote, respectively. Biden also became the first Democrat to carry New Hanover County, home of Wilmington, since 1976, and held Trump to a single-digit margin in the Charlotte-area suburban county of Cabarrus, the first time since 1976 that the Republican margin in this county has been less than 10%. Obviously, Biden’s approval rating has plummeted since 2020, and many independent voters may switch their support if his approval numbers remain in the 30’s and 40’s, but the overall Democratic momentum in North Carolina is a stark contrast from Florida. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper used that shift to win a second term by 4.5 points. Florida Democrats undoubtedly envy their fellow party leaders in the Tarheel State, because barring a total shock between now and 2022 Midterm Election Day, DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio appear to be headed to re-election by comfortable margins of victory.
Conversely, Trump held or outperformed his 2016 margin in Robeson, Bladen, Martin, Granville and Gates counties, all counties that had been reliably Democratic in the 20th century and which had voted for Obama twice before flipping to Trump in 2016. Biden thereby became the first Democrat ever to win the presidency without Robeson County, the largest county in the Lumber River region of the state and the county which had given Jimmy Carter his largest raw vote margin in the state in both 1976 and 1980. Trump picked off neighboring Scotland County, one of only 15 counties he flipped nationally, becoming the first Republican to carry it since Ronald Reagan in 1984 and making Biden the first Democrat to win without Scotland since the county’s creation in 1899. Biden also became the first Democrat to win the White House without Granville and Gates counties since 1892, the first since 1884 to win without Bladen County, the first since 1856 to win without Richmond County and the first ever to win without Martin County.
Georgia Voter Demographic Trends:
Analysis of Georgia’s leftward shift is much simpler than North Carolina. Democratic gains in Georiga are directly attributable to the new generation of suburban voters throughout the Atlanta Metro region. Biden was able to build Clinton’s vote shares in the densely-populated Metro Atlanta counties of Gwinnett, Cobb, and Henry, increasing her vote shares of 50%, 48%, and 50% to 58%, 56%, and 60%, respectively–in all three cases, the best showing for a non-Georgian Democrat since John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election.
In this year’s high-profile Senate race, Republican nominee Herschel Walker saw his lead evaporate in most polls against incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock. Walker is a statewide football legend who was endorsed by former President Trump, but several revelations about his past hurt his polling numbers. Warnock is a pastor who narrowly won in the 2021 special election runoff against Kelly Loeffler. Warnock’s campaign has been low-key as Walker’s misfortunes continue to attract media scrutiny.
If Warnock manages to defeat Walker, statewide Democrats will count on him to play a key role in the 2024 Presidential election. At the national level, Democratic leaders know that Florida will likely be even more challenging to conquer, Florida’s Electoral vote haul is cancelled-out if Democrats win Georgia and North Carolina. Keep an eye on the amount of money, personnel and other resources that Democrat leaders pour into Georgia and North Carolina over the next 30 months.
“In the 2012 presidential election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney won Georgia by 8 percentage points. In 2016, Trump won by 5. Two years later, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate, won the governorship over Democrat Stacey Abrams by just 1.4 percentage points — amid allegations that he and the GOP had worked to suppress minority votes by purging voter rolls.
“Georgia has become more competitive, so this is not all of a sudden,” said Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. “Democratic activists have been pining for this moment for years. It was a matter of when and not if.” [SOURCE: LA Times https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-11-13/biden-flips-southern-state-georgia-defeats-trump-georgia]
Even if Trump or a different 2024 Republican presidential nominee improves on Trump’s southwestern performance in 2020 by winning Arizona in 2024, it won’t matter if Democrats manage to win either Georgia or North Carolina. See below:
Since 2004, O’Hern has worked with political campaigns in roles ranging from major projects involving nationwide digital marketing for U.S. Presidential candidates, U.S. Congressmen, state governors, and state representatives. O’Hern’s journalism background includes news reporting and editing for various organizations and news publications in Alabama and Florida since 2002. O’Hern graduated from Samford University in Birmingham, Ala with a degree in journalism and a minor in political science.