North Carolina and Georgia shift toward toss-up status for Harris

The presidential race is tightening in North Carolina and Georgia, with both now firmly seen as swing states by both parties — a huge turnaround from before Vice President Harris joined the race. 

With President Biden in the race against former President Trump, Georgia, a state Biden won four years ago, looked out of reach. In North Carolina, a state Democrats have won in the presidential race only twice in the past 50 years, the odds seemed even longer.

Now that has completely changed, with both states clearly shifting to toss-up status.

“Post-Biden dropping out, Harris has gotten a lot of good polling out of places like Georgia and North Carolina,” said Decision Desk HQ’s Scott Tranter. “She is doing stronger among the African American segment than Joe Biden was, and then [there’s] enthusiasm among Democratic and some independent voters in these states — enthusiasm that she has that Joe Biden didn’t have.” 

Trump is leading Harris by 0.3 percentage points in Georgia, and Harris is leading Trump by 0.1 percentage points in North Carolina, according to the Decision Desk HQ/The Hill’s aggregation of polls, suggesting both states are toss-ups. A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday showed Trump with a slight edge over Harris in Georgia and declared the race in North Carolina too close to call.

Fox News this week shifted its forecast to give Harris the edge in the overall presidential race, largely because it now views Georgia and North Carolina as toss-up states. Fox News previously favored Trump in both states.

The figures all show Harris has closed the gap with Trump since taking over the top of the ticket.

In the days before Biden dropped out of the race, Trump had a 4.9 percentage point lead over Biden in North Carolina and a 4 percentage point lead in Georgia in the DDHQ/The Hill aggregation of polls.

North Carolina and Georgia each have 16 Electoral College votes, and Harris appears to be doing everything she can to make a serious play in the Tar Heel State.

Harris traveled to North Carolina on Thursday for visits to Charlotte and Greensboro, drawing 7,500 and 17,000 people at the events in those two cities, respectively. Biden’s postdebate rally in Raleigh on June 28, in contrast, had 2,000 attendees, according to the campaign at the time.

Trump is doing everything he can to hold on to both states. He visited Charlotte last week and made a swing to Georgia last month. In Georgia, the former president has also sought to mend his relationship with GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

Trump won both states in 2016 and won North Carolina in 2020. Former President Obama is the only Democrat to carry North Carolina this century. He won in 2008 by about 14,000 votes.

North Carolina is the state that perhaps has changed the most from Harris’s entry to the race.

Tranter noted it was largely seen as a likely or lean-Republican state with Biden in the race, but it has gone in Harris’s direction over the past eight weeks. Harris is particularly focused on winning over Black voters in the state.

“North Carolina is an absolute jump ball at this point. It’s going to be an incredibly close race. It could go either way,” said Raleigh-based Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson. 

Jackson, who has long tracked Democratic enthusiasm in the state, says party energy in the state is close to the surge seen in fall 2008, when Obama eked out a win by a fraction of a percentage point. 

Harris’s campaign has been “a shot of pure adrenaline in the heart of the Democratic party in North Carolina,” Jackson said, noting reports that nearly 2,000 new volunteers signed up in the Tar Heel State during Tuesday’s debate. 

North Carolina is likely a must-win for Harris — losing the state would mean she would have to win one or two of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Harris could lose Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina if she holds those three northern “blue wall” states in addition to the other states won by Biden in 2020. Winning North Carolina, however, would give her more room for error elsewhere.

“If she wins North Carolina, she is the next President of the United States because Trump has no other pathway,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said over the weekend. 

Republicans’ controversial gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, could also hurt the former president in the state, Jackson argued, because “his brand of extremism is turning Republicans off.”

GOP strategist Doug Heye questioned if Harris’s plan in North Carolina is to replicate the model Obama used to win the state or if she would expand on it. Obama spent a lot of time in North Carolina ahead of his race, including hunkering down in Asheville for his prep before debating former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

“If she tries to replicate the Obama model, okay, but he barely won. Does trying to expand that make sense?” Heye said. “I’m going to be interested to see in future visits where she goes.”

He said Charlotte and Greensboro, where Harris went this week, are already popular locations that Democrats travel to, while visits to rural places like Greenville, Clinton, Hickory and Elizabeth City would be ways to expand the map.

When it comes to Trump’s efforts in North Carolina, Heye said, “He’s got to do more.”

“At this point, I still would rather be Trump than Harris. But he has to work to lock it down. He cannot take North Carolina for granted,” he said.

When Harris campaigned in Georgia in late August, she pleaded with voters for a repeat of 2020, when Biden carried the Peach State and the two Democratic senators were elected.

Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win the state since 1992. The Trump campaign is eyeing the state as a pickup opportunity.

Trump was comfortably in the lead in Georgia for much of the year, and its backward shift toward toss-up status is “surprising” at this point in the cycle, Tranter said. 

Atlanta-based Democratic strategist Fred Hicks, on the other hand, says it’s not a shock that the Peach State is getting bluer, pointing to Biden’s win in 2020, followed by Sens. Raphael Warnock (D) and Jon Ossoff’s (D) ascension to the Senate. 

Hicks acknowledged the hurdles for Harris might be higher in Georgia than in North Carolina, and the fractional difference in the polling averages reflects that. But Hicks also said the energy among Georgia Democrats is “night and day” now that Harris is leading the party ticket, with a surge of enthusiasm among voters of color and young people.

Another boost for Harris in the two Southeastern states could come from two key demographics where she has closed a gap on Trump: Black and young voters. 

Harris attended Howard University, which is one of the country’s historically Black college and universities (HBCUs). North Carolina and Georgia are home to some of the most HBCUs, with 11 in North Carolina and 10 in Georgia.

“The HBCUs will turn out machines for Obama,” Heye said. “So, if she can fully engage those, that’s a big boost to her that Biden certainly didn’t have.”