Virginia was an open primary so historical Republicanism didn't matter. North Carolina is semi-open with independents being allowed to vote and as Al has pointed out, the industrial areas of North Carolina are historically Republican, so that's another advantage for Obama.
I'm not entirely sure whetehr the first part is directed at me, but perhaps I should clarify that when talking about percentage of Democrats I'm not really after a comparison with Virginia, at least not primarily. I'm aware that Virginia was open and that North Carolina is only semi-open. But part of my point is that I THINK NC is one of those places where you have people who are registered Democrats but vote Republican (Oklahoma is probably the best example of this). The more there are of those, the better for Clinton. So I'm trying to get a gauge of that. I'm pretty sure there are far from enough, of course.
I was talking to elcorazon with that first part.
The biggest problem for Hillary is that all of the "DINOs" are in districts that also have lots of blacks. The whitest parts of the state is the historically Republican eastern part and the uber-GOP suburban districts. The only district with lots of conservative Democrats and not many blacks is NC-3 (due to racial gerrymandering, NC-1 took in all the blacks) and it only has 4 delegates, so all Obama needs to do there is hold Hillary below 62.5%, and with blacks probably making up still around a quarter of Democratic primary voters that shouldn't be too much of a problem for him.
And North Carolina is also a southern state where like Virginia, there actually are educated and affluent whites that vote Democratic. Take Union County, the base of NC-9 for instance. It's 70% Republican, but the other 30% is favorable to Obama. And thus Hillary probably won't be winning NC-9.
