North Carolina vs. Georgia

[Builder Refused]

Why is it that Atlanta's suburbs have a heavy D sprawl, while tech and finance focused Raleigh and Charlotte are fairly cordoned off?
Also why is it that Georgia's small cities are heavily D while North Carolina has fewer cities that of that size and centrality, and instead more countrypolitan counties without strong cores?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Firstly, Georgia overall tends to have a higher black population, especially in these smaller cities like Savanaugh, Augusta, Macon, ect.

Charlotte and Raleigh are much whiter and still much smaller than Atlanta so their sphere of influence into suburbs and exurbs just isn't as large.

[Skill and Chance]

Firstly, Georgia overall tends to have a higher black population, especially in these smaller cities like Savanaugh, Augusta, Macon, ect.

Charlotte and Raleigh are much whiter and still much smaller than Atlanta so their sphere of influence into suburbs and exurbs just isn't as large.

Since the Obama era, Democrats are increasingly struggling in multiple small/medium city environments.  Iowa, Ohio, and NC.  This could also help explain why VA never went off the deep end Dem like CO did. 

[Gass3268]

Firstly, Georgia overall tends to have a higher black population, especially in these smaller cities like Savanaugh, Augusta, Macon, ect.

Charlotte and Raleigh are much whiter and still much smaller than Atlanta so their sphere of influence into suburbs and exurbs just isn't as large.

Since the Obama era, Democrats are increasingly struggling in multiple small/medium city environments.  Iowa, Ohio, and NC.  This could also help explain why VA never went off the deep end Dem like CO did. 

Funny is it seems like the opposite is occurring in Wisconsin post-2016.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Firstly, Georgia overall tends to have a higher black population, especially in these smaller cities like Savanaugh, Augusta, Macon, ect.

Charlotte and Raleigh are much whiter and still much smaller than Atlanta so their sphere of influence into suburbs and exurbs just isn't as large.

Since the Obama era, Democrats are increasingly struggling in multiple small/medium city environments.  Iowa, Ohio, and NC.  This could also help explain why VA never went off the deep end Dem like CO did. 

The common theme is that IA, OH, NC, and VA all have pretty dense small town/rural areas that have swung hard towards the GOP in the Trump era, and in IA, OH, and NC can outvote the rest of the state in a normal year. NC in particular has some of the densest parts of Appalachia which if you excluded would make the state a lot more simillar to VA.

The issue for CO Rs is their old coalition heavily relied on the suburbs and the rurals are just so sparse to ever put a meaningful dent in Denver and Boulder's margins on their own.

[Sol]

The Raleigh metro area actually votes a bit more Democratic than metro Atlanta, despite being much less diverse and significantly smaller--and that's excluding the Durham-Chapel Hill metro, which really operates as a part of the metro.

Charlotte is a smaller, more typical sunbelt city. It doesn't vote much differently from, say, Nashville.

The big difference between the small cities of Georgia and North Carolina is that the former are much more Black. Not much different otherwise tbh.

The 'countrypolitan' counties of North Carolina have pretty obvious analogues in lot of the semi-exurban counties north of the Fall Line in Georgia.

The main difference politically between the two states is, generally, proportions.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The Raleigh metro area actually votes a bit more Democratic than metro Atlanta, despite being much less diverse and significantly smaller--and that's excluding the Durham-Chapel Hill metro, which really operates as a part of the metro.

Charlotte is a smaller, more typical sunbelt city. It doesn't vote much differently from, say, Nashville.

The big difference between the small cities of Georgia and North Carolina is that the former are much more Black. Not much different otherwise tbh.

The 'countrypolitan' counties of North Carolina have pretty obvious analogues in lot of the semi-exurban counties north of the Fall Line in Georgia.

The main difference politically between the two states is, generally, proportions.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed one day Raliegh will go full Austin and finally allow Dems to flip the state, though tbf, on the state legislative level that'd be an awful vote distribution.

[Skill and Chance]

Firstly, Georgia overall tends to have a higher black population, especially in these smaller cities like Savanaugh, Augusta, Macon, ect.

Charlotte and Raleigh are much whiter and still much smaller than Atlanta so their sphere of influence into suburbs and exurbs just isn't as large.

Since the Obama era, Democrats are increasingly struggling in multiple small/medium city environments.  Iowa, Ohio, and NC.  This could also help explain why VA never went off the deep end Dem like CO did. 

Funny is it seems like the opposite is occurring in Wisconsin post-2016.

Wisconsin is increasingly all the Dem votes coming out of 2 places.  Sometimes it's enough, sometimes it isn't. 

[Sol]

The Raleigh metro area actually votes a bit more Democratic than metro Atlanta, despite being much less diverse and significantly smaller--and that's excluding the Durham-Chapel Hill metro, which really operates as a part of the metro.

Charlotte is a smaller, more typical sunbelt city. It doesn't vote much differently from, say, Nashville.

The big difference between the small cities of Georgia and North Carolina is that the former are much more Black. Not much different otherwise tbh.

The 'countrypolitan' counties of North Carolina have pretty obvious analogues in lot of the semi-exurban counties north of the Fall Line in Georgia.

The main difference politically between the two states is, generally, proportions.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed one day Raliegh will go full Austin and finally allow Dems to flip the state, though tbf, on the state legislative level that'd be an awful vote distribution.

Tbh the Research Triangle already votes like Austin..and it's not enough.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The Raleigh metro area actually votes a bit more Democratic than metro Atlanta, despite being much less diverse and significantly smaller--and that's excluding the Durham-Chapel Hill metro, which really operates as a part of the metro.

Charlotte is a smaller, more typical sunbelt city. It doesn't vote much differently from, say, Nashville.

The big difference between the small cities of Georgia and North Carolina is that the former are much more Black. Not much different otherwise tbh.

The 'countrypolitan' counties of North Carolina have pretty obvious analogues in lot of the semi-exurban counties north of the Fall Line in Georgia.

The main difference politically between the two states is, generally, proportions.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed one day Raliegh will go full Austin and finally allow Dems to flip the state, though tbf, on the state legislative level that'd be an awful vote distribution.

Tbh the Research Triangle already votes like Austin..and it's not enough.

Durham and Chapel Hill (both college towns) do, but Wake County, the main population center is nowhere near as blue as Travis County. Part of that could be that there are still some areas around the edges that haven't been fully pulled into the influence of Raliegh though.

[Gass3268]

Firstly, Georgia overall tends to have a higher black population, especially in these smaller cities like Savanaugh, Augusta, Macon, ect.

Charlotte and Raleigh are much whiter and still much smaller than Atlanta so their sphere of influence into suburbs and exurbs just isn't as large.

Since the Obama era, Democrats are increasingly struggling in multiple small/medium city environments.  Iowa, Ohio, and NC.  This could also help explain why VA never went off the deep end Dem like CO did. 

Funny is it seems like the opposite is occurring in Wisconsin post-2016.

Wisconsin is increasingly all the Dem votes coming out of 2 places.  Sometimes it's enough, sometimes it isn't. 

If you go down to the municipal level, since 2016, in almost every election, most of the largest Wisconsin cities/villages have moved to the left. Most importantly if we want to break out of the Milwaukee/Madison hold, one can look Fox Cities/Valley. Especially in, Green Bay were the Democratic margin appears to be ticking up each year. There are some exceptions (Kenosha, Superior, etc.) 

[Sol]

The Raleigh metro area actually votes a bit more Democratic than metro Atlanta, despite being much less diverse and significantly smaller--and that's excluding the Durham-Chapel Hill metro, which really operates as a part of the metro.

Charlotte is a smaller, more typical sunbelt city. It doesn't vote much differently from, say, Nashville.

The big difference between the small cities of Georgia and North Carolina is that the former are much more Black. Not much different otherwise tbh.

The 'countrypolitan' counties of North Carolina have pretty obvious analogues in lot of the semi-exurban counties north of the Fall Line in Georgia.

The main difference politically between the two states is, generally, proportions.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed one day Raliegh will go full Austin and finally allow Dems to flip the state, though tbf, on the state legislative level that'd be an awful vote distribution.

Tbh the Research Triangle already votes like Austin..and it's not enough.

Durham and Chapel Hill (both college towns) do, but Wake County, the main population center is nowhere near as blue as Travis County. Part of that could be that there are still some areas around the edges that haven't been fully pulled into the influence of Raliegh though.

Yeah, I didn't mean Raleigh specifically, I just meant the region as a whole, which votes pretty comparably. Travis also of course, as you know, has fewer exurbs.

Still Democrats do insanely well in Wake County; they kept every state leg. seat there except a deeply Republican one in far flung SW Wake.

[walleye26]

The main thing is that the rurals in NC are just too dense, plus there is still room for Dems to fall in NC where that isn’t the case in GA. Some GA counties are 90%+ are, and others are 85%+ R. There’s not a lot of room left to fall for GA Dems. In NC, you have a fair number of rural counties where the Dems are getting 30% of the vote, so they can still drop. Also, the other big difference:

Atlanta Metro cast 59% of the total GA vote in 2020.
Research Triangle+Charlotte cast 42% of total NC vote in 2020.

[kwabbit]

As others have said, Atlanta isn’t more Democratic, it’s just bigger. I think Raleigh is assumed to be much larger than it is. It’s only about 2 congressional districts in size. Atlanta is 6/7. There’s this expectation that Wake will net votes like the ATL metro but even strong growth in Wake only adds 20k voters and maybe 8k net each cycle.

I think the tiny counties in Georgia add to this factor. Fulton + DeKalb + Clayton together aren’t that much bigger than Wake is. It’s gives the image of a expansive metro swallowing up all of these counties when in reality it’s not that far from ATL downtown.

Finally, ATL gets yuppies + Black migration while Raleigh gets only the yuppies. White voters becoming more Democratic is a huge factor in Georgia flipping, but the Black growth is what makes it so inexorable. If the Black % is rising in a county like it is in the Atlanta Metro counties, they’re gonna get more Democratic regardless of the political climate.

[King of Kensington]

I'm surprised anyone would think Raleigh and Atlanta are comparable.  Atlanta is one of the largest cities in the US (#8 among MSAs) and the main metropolis of the (core) South.  Raleigh-Durham is way down the list (#41) and not at all in the same tier. 

[Builder Refused]

It's true the sizes are different; the big areas are smaller and the small areas bigger in NC. I suspect this is largely because of industries, for instance Davidson and Randolph I've heard are like, big furniture producers, while in contrast the depopulating Northeast is like a tobacco growing region.

Could it be that the middle density of hyper R areas is due to manufacturing? Like in Tennessee with chemical and plastic molding industries. Atlanta also seems like a more exciting area so that's another thing, and anecdotally the parts of Cary I've been to seem a bit disconnected from Raleigh, though I don't know if that's accurate.

[Annatar]

I don't think looking at counties is a useful way to compare states, after all counties are just administrative units, its people who vote and how much each state's electorate is made up of different demographic groups and how they vote is what really matters.

The fundamental difference between NC & GA is NC has a 70% white, 20% black electorate and GA is 60% white, 30% black.

If turnout is equal and dems win blacks 90-10, practically it means Republicans need to win whites by 26% in NC to win or 63-37 whereas they need to win whites by 45% in GA or 72.5-27.5 to win.

Simply put, its easier for Republicans to consistently win 62% of the white vote in NC than 73% in GA, especially as college whites in Atlanta become less Republican.

I can see the GOP winning 62% of whites in NC for a long time, keeping whites at 73% in GA will be harder, also black share of electorate is not growing in NC unlike GA, so 62% of whites will win NC for decades to come, in GA its a different story.

[GALeftist]

This is an interesting question, and I think there are a few important factors. Firstly, Raleigh's CSA is actually much bluer than Atlanta's CSA, to the point that Biden netted only like 50,000 more votes out of Atlanta's CSA, but Atlanta's CSA is just so monstrous with its 6.9 million residents that Georgia Republicans only have 4 million or so people residing in the rest of the state. Then, a majority of those 4 million are in the sphere of influence of Savannah, Macon, Augusta or Columbus – all also trending left. Democrats are near rock bottom in the rest of the state and can't really fall any further. Meanwhile in North Carolina, Biden barely won Charlotte's CSA and lost all the other relevant ones except for Raleigh, and they have far more room to fall in the rest of North Carolina thanks to the Northeastern part of the state depopulating.

[Builder Refused]

I mean it's true that rural and nonmetro NC is becoming whiter but I believe the same is the case in GA. So then the question is what about the housing market, employment opportunities, and culture in these metros attracts black people to Atlanta more than Raleigh and Charlotte. I can think for one, Atlanta has for a long time been like a black city, less so for Raleigh and Charlotte.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I don't think looking at counties is a useful way to compare states, after all counties are just administrative units, its people who vote and how much each state's electorate is made up of different demographic groups and how they vote is what really matters.

The fundamental difference between NC & GA is NC has a 70% white, 20% black electorate and GA is 60% white, 30% black.

If turnout is equal and dems win blacks 90-10, practically it means Republicans need to win whites by 26% in NC to win or 63-37 whereas they need to win whites by 45% in GA or 72.5-27.5 to win.

Simply put, its easier for Republicans to consistently win 62% of the white vote in NC than 73% in GA, especially as college whites in Atlanta become less Republican.

I can see the GOP winning 62% of whites in NC for a long time, keeping whites at 73% in GA will be harder, also black share of electorate is not growing in NC unlike GA, so 62% of whites will win NC for decades to come, in GA its a different story.

Yeah this is a really good analysis that many (including myself) tend to overlook. NC does have the growth of some liberal white pockets, but it's not really enough to offset other large shifts in the state. You also just don't see the same "extremeness" of black neighborhoods you see in GA; the black population on the South side of Atlanta literally dominates several counties now and you can draw 4 50% black seats in Atlanta, whereas in NC the black population tends to be much more scattered, and you can't draw any remotely compact majority black district. This also makes organizing and stuff a bit harder.

North Carolina could flip down the road, but it is not going to be for the same reasons as Georgia.