North Carolina as a Battleground

I wanted to highlight a piece I wrote for National Review Online about North Carolina.

One of the fascinating things about North Carolina politics this year (and there are many) is that the state was never supposed to be a part of the political dialogue. Not in the primary, not in the general. Of course, a lot of things happened in this campaign season no one predicted, so maybe it makes a certain sense. In any event, it is hugely significant that in the North Carolina primary on May 6 — at a time when Barack Obama was seen as the clear front-runner — 44 percent of North Carolina Democrats voted against him. That’s 664,000 voters.

With the campaign neck and neck in the state, those conservative Democrats, the old “Jessecrats” who are registered Democrat but often vote Republican, represent a prime opportunity for John McCain to pick up votes in the state. A large percentage of these voters are in eastern North Carolina. Two factors here help McCain:

1. Many of these voters are military personnel and veterans located around North Carolina bases such as Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg (North Carolina has the second highest population of military personnel in the nation — largely concentrated in the east). These are natural McCain voters.

2. In 2004, northeastern North Carolina gave Sen. Richard Burr (R) his second highest margin with swing voters.

It’s no coincidence that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s first visit to North Carolina was in Greenville, the largest city in the area. Nor is it a coincidence that Hillary Clinton made such a strong effort to target the East.

In a year of political twists and turns, McCain may well win the state, in part, by following the Clinton road map that exposed a party divided.

Fascinating.