Good thread. You know, I'm actually starting to wonder about this myself. Conventional wisdom is that NC is a highly polarized state that the Dems can win with high enough black turnout.
But is that true? Consider that Clinton actually did better than Obama in turnout. She beat him in both '08 and '12 in number of votes. If you look at Mecklenburg Cty, Durham Cty, Guilford Cty... Clinton is actually getting higher numbers of raw votes there than Obama did in '08. Sure, Obama did better in some black belt counties... like in Hertford County, he got 600 more votes. In Bertie County, he also got about 600 more votes. Ok so 500 here, 600 there. Clinton lost a couple counties that Obama won as well, like Martin and Richmond. I don't know if all of this makes much of a difference.
Meanwhile Trump improved on McCain by over 200k votes. His margin over Clinton was over 170k votes. So 600 here and there is not gonna cut it. We gotta find a lot more than that.
Maybe there are simply more conservatives moving to NC than people realize.
The main reason that Trump improved so much on McCain was because he was able to increase the rural conservative white turnout. His socially conservative message energized that section of the Republican base much more than McCain's more moderate message did. If it really is a turnout battle, then you're forgetting the Republican side of the equation.
