Trump’s inroads with Black voters test Harris in North Carolina

Todd Buchanan hangs a leaflet on the doorknob of a modest brick house, knocks lightly, and steps back. An older Black woman in a flowered blouse opens the door, a smiling toddler at her feet, and Mr. Buchanan explains that he’s come to remind her to vote in November’s election.

“I always vote,” Deborah Huntley assures him, adding that she’s been urging her sister and daughter, whose toddler she’s watching, to go to the polls as well. “They say it don’t make a difference, but I do it anyway.”

A retired caregiver, Ms. Huntley belongs to a generation that remembers being denied the vote in states like North Carolina and, since then, has overwhelmingly supported Democrats up and down the ballot. Mr. Buchanan, the canvasser, belongs to a younger generation of Black Americans that has grown less tethered to the Democratic Party and to voting overall.

With just weeks to go before Election Day, North Carolina offers a window into a murky but potentially significant shift taking place among voters of color. Former President Donald Trump, whose rhetoric and policies Democrats have long lambasted as racist, is polling higher among Black voters, particularly men, than any Republican nominee in decades. Some surveys have shown him winning as much as 15% or more of the Black vote across the United States – the highest share for a GOP presidential candidate in 60 years. Even if that proves vastly inflated, and other surveys suggest it is, Mr. Trump seems likely to improve on his 2020 performance, in which he won 8% of Black voters.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and Asian woman who would be the nation’s first female president, is trying to shore up Black support in states like North Carolina and Georgia, where she will need a robust turnout to win. At the same time, polls suggest she’s notched some gains with white voters, especially women and those with college degrees, who have continued to move away from Mr. Trump. How this racial sorting plays out may determine whether the Tar Heel State – where 1 in 5 eligible voters is Black, and more than one-third of voters hold college degrees – remains in the Republican column or goes blue for the first time since Barack Obama won here in 2008.

Republicans say Mr. Trump’s economic message has found a receptive audience among Black and Latino men who are unhappy about the high cost of living. Many also seem to like the former president’s pugilistic style. The Trump campaign has leaned into hypermasculine branding, which has targeted young Black and Hispanic voters and the media they consume.

“They get it. They’re coming our way,” says Lorena Castillo-Ritz, the GOP chair in Mecklenburg County. “They’re not better off under this government.”

Ms. Harris’ strength among white women, meanwhile, has been driven in no small part by the issue of abortion. Many female voters, particularly highly educated ones, remain outraged about Mr. Trump’s role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the national right to an abortion and threw the matter back to the states. In North Carolina, abortion is now illegal after 12 weeks gestation, with few exceptions.

Race and class are tightly woven into politics in North Carolina, a state with a growing and diverse population. This includes college-educated professionals in the Research Triangle between Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, and those working in Charlotte’s financial services industries. Latinos, who made up less than 2% of the electorate in 2008, now account for 8% of eligible voters and a larger share of the state’s population, which grew by 9.5% to 10.4 million in the decade leading up to 2020. Every day, an estimated 120 people move into the Charlotte area, fueling a construction boom.

In Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina, Democrats are battling to raise turnout among voters of color who represent the party’s best hope of overcoming the Republican advantage in rural areas. “We know what the numbers are, and we know we have to fight really hard to get people out to vote,” says Vi Lyles, the four-term mayor of Charlotte.

North Carolina also ranks second only to Texas in the size of its rural population; 80 of its 100 counties are considered rural, including western mountainous counties that were leveled last month by Hurricane Helene. Most are heavily Republican, but some also have large Black populations, where Democrats are also hoping to turn out votes. Meanwhile, the state’s diffuse media markets make for expensive statewide campaigns decided by knife-edge margins.

“It’s a microcosm of the country. It’s split right down the middle,” says Doug Wilson, a Democratic strategist in Charlotte who is an adviser to the Harris-Walz campaign.

All about turnout

In 2008, Mr. Obama carried several rural counties in North Carolina. Since then, white working-class voters have become a smaller share of the overall population but have also swung hard to the GOP, boxing out Democrats who could once count on a floor of rural votes in statewide races.

The intensification in rural support for Republicans made Democrats more reliant on turnout in 1-million-strong Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte. What was once an all-volunteer county party with a paltry budget now employs more than 20 full-time staff working out of a downtown office overflowing with volunteers helping to get out the vote. Behind this expansion is a pitch to national Democratic donors that North Carolina is winnable, provided blue cities deliver more blue votes.

“What happens in Mecklenburg County matters to everyone in the country,” says Andrew Richards, deputy operations director at the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party. “This is where the doors need to get knocked.”

In the 2022 midterms, 58% of white voters cast a ballot in North Carolina, while Black voter turnout was 42%. That gap hurt Democratic candidates like Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, who lost an open Senate race to GOP Rep. Ted Budd by 120,000 votes.

Democrats had built a robust 2024 registration and turnout effort here – communicating with voters over social media, and at barbecues, bars, and churches – even before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and the party nominated Ms. Harris in August.

The change of candidate jolted the presidential race in ways that were reminiscent of Mr. Obama’s run in 2008, says Aimy Steele, who runs the New North Carolina Project, the nonprofit that sent Mr. Buchanan to Ms. Huntley’s door. “Now Vice President Harris is at the top of the ticket; there’s an excitement,” she says.

Still, it’s not clear that excitement extends to all demographics. Mr. Obama himself recently sounded an alarm about a lack of enthusiasm for Ms. Harris’ candidacy among Black men. “Based on reports I’m getting,” he said at an event in Pittsburgh, “we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running.” Speaking to Black men directly, the former president pointedly suggested sexism was at play: “It makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

When Ms. Harris was asked by a Black journalists association last month about her lagging support among Black men, she vowed to win them over with her policies. “Black men are like any other voting group. You’ve got to earn their vote,” she said. Her campaign has been emphasizing support for small businesses.

Activists like Dr. Steele suggest it’s hard for female politicians to overcome patriarchal views that women should “play a supporting role” to men. She contrasts the recent defeats of Ms. Beasley, the Senate nominee, and Stacey Abrams, a two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia, with statewide victories for Black male candidates like Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock in the South.

The overall gender gap, which cuts across racial groups, has widened since Ms. Harris became the nominee, with men more likely than women to prefer Mr. Trump by a 26-point margin, compared with a 17-point margin when Mr. Biden was running. In 2016, when the Democratic nominee was Hillary Clinton, the gender gap was 11 points, according to exit polls.

A controversial candidate for governor

Complicating the picture for the GOP in North Carolina is their nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Black Republican whose candidacy imploded in September after CNN reported he had posted a number of offensive comments on a porn website. Mr. Robinson, who denied making the posts and has sued CNN for defamation, had already courted controversy with extreme statements on abortion and other social issues. Most of his staff have quit his campaign, and he’s fallen far behind in polls and fundraising to Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee.

In attack ads, Democrats have tried to tie Mr. Robinson to Mr. Trump. The former president had endorsed and publicly praised Mr. Robinson, at one point calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Still, Republicans and even some Democrats say such attacks are unlikely to dent Mr. Trump’s vote share, though they could hurt down-ballot Republicans.

Addul Ali, a Black Republican and Robinson ally who’s running a longshot bid against five-term Democratic Rep. Alma Adams in a deep-blue district in Mecklenburg County, says Mr. Robinson has been unfairly maligned. He believes the polls underestimate the gubernatorial candidate’s support, including that of Black men.

Mr. Ali, who owns a small media company, calls himself an “urban conservative” – a label he believes appeals to younger Black voters, who, he says, have soured on Democrats’ failure to deliver on promises for decades. Campaigning in bars and smoke shops, he tells them Republicans are better for business and border security and that he doesn’t care if they smoke a joint after work or what their sexual orientation is; he has the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans and hands out “LGBTQ for Ali” yard signs.

“[Voters] have good sense. When given the right information, they will make good decisions,” he says. “But you have to show up. You have to have the conversation.”

Even if he loses, however, Mr. Ali hopes his campaign may be effective in wrangling minority votes for Mr. Trump and other Republican candidates.

“Every vote we can, for lack of a better word, poach from the Democrats, anybody we can swing our way, has a monumental impact,” he says.

Harris vs. Trump on criminal justice

One sore spot for Ms. Harris among some Black voters is her record as a public prosecutor and attorney general in California, presiding over a criminal justice system in which Blacks and Latinos were disproportionately incarcerated. Analysts say she also sought to reform the system and to divert nonviolent drug offenders from prison.

As president, Mr. Trump signed the First Step Act in 2017, a bipartisan bill aimed at reforming federal sentencing and recidivism. He also granted clemency to individuals convicted of drug-related crimes and pardoned two high-profile rappers charged with firearm offenses.

At the same time, Mr. Trump has a long history of what critics call race-baiting. He questioned whether Ms. Harris is really Black. He spread an unfounded rumor that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets. This week, he was sued by a group of Black and Latino men known as the Central Park Five who had been exonerated in the rape and assault of a jogger in 1989, for continuing to suggest they were guilty.

Still, as a Black man who served nearly 10 years for bank robbery, Kenneth Robinson (no relation to Lieutenant Governor Robinson) says he understands why some formerly incarcerated voters might support Mr. Trump.

The former president speaks bluntly and doesn’t worry about offending anyone, he says. “One thing that we do say amongst ourselves is that Trump is strong, and he ain’t going to change his tone or his rhetoric for nobody,” says Mr. Robinson, who heads a nonprofit in Charlotte that advocates for formerly incarcerated people. His group has received state and federal funding to house individuals and their families and has acquired land to build affordable housing. They represent more than 2,000 people, he says, “who are registered and are going to vote.”

That is, if they’re allowed to. North Carolina has fought a protracted legal battle over whether felons released from prison but still under supervision can vote. Of the 56,000 people in this category, 42% were Black, according to a 2021 court filing. Their voting rights were restored for the 2022 election, but the state Supreme Court has since reinstated the ban.

Mr. Robinson himself plans to vote for Ms. Harris. The main reason? He has five daughters. “In order for any of my daughters or granddaughters to ever have an opportunity to be the president, somebody has to do it first,” he says. “So, for that reason alone, she would earn my vote.”