Seems like it was ripe for his taking. A lot of demographic shifts favoring the Dems, including a growing population in the heavily educated research triangle.
I mean, tbf the margin between Trump & Biden was like 75k votes but I think that Biden just didn't expect to have those 75k votes lean in Trump's favor.
People heavily overestimate how big of a stronghold the Research Triangle and even the Charlotte Metropolitan areas are in NC. Sure, Trump lost votes in Durham, Wake, and Mecklenberg counties in between 2016 and 2020 - but he only widened his already-wide lead in the counties that border the urban pockets of NC. Places like Scotland and Lenoir counties - where votes for democrats and republicans have historically been cast pretty evenly or leaning slightly Dem (in Scotland's case) - were the counties where Trump picked up an extra couple thousand votes. Which meant that Biden's slim lead from Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, and Asheville wasn't enough.
Not to mention - of course - that Biden did the typical democrat shit of making a pledge to support the Lumbee Recognition Act and Trump one-upped him by saying "me too!" & then going so far as to, as he did in 2016 in other areas of NC, hold a rally in Robeson county.
Libs will tell you "NC is just super rural and racist in those areas no wonder they went for trump!!" but do this :shocked-pikachu: when you point out that:
- Robeson county has historically voted for the Democrat candidate in Presidential elections from 1880 - 2016 save 1972
- Robeson county has the highest percentage of Lumbee/American Indian residents compared to any other county in the state at 38% and actually are the only county in NC where American Indians make up the majority of the population (to my knowledge).
- Before Trump's 2020 rally, Robeson had never seen a President make a stop during their campaign.
- Robeson is 99/100 for poorest county in NC with a per capita income of $15,321? And what's that?? Scotland county's 97/100 with $16,297? Huh...
- The other counties that Trump scraped extra votes out of all are similarly poorer counties.
:thinkin-lenin:
What’s a research triangle?
A rapidly gentrifying hellhole where, during the last year of the pandemic, average rent went up 30% in areas.
Is it a euphemism?
rent keeps fucking going up everywhere, god I hate this state
Now with Apple & Google coming to RDU it'll only get cheaper right?!?! :capitalist-laugh:
probably a higher portion of young people there than say south carolina
I think a lot of people think NC demographically resembles many of the other states that are getting blue quickly like Georgia, Virginia, or even Arizona when it really doesn't. The base of Trump support is rural, non-college educated white people. North Carolina is much more rural than Georgia or Virginia. As of the 2010 Census, North Carolina was 35% rural compared to Georgia and Virginia's 25%. North Carolina, as of 2019, was 32% college educated while Virginia is 40%. And North Carolina doesn't have the nonwhite population that Georgia has. Essentially, North Carolina is whiter, more rural, and less educated than states that are trending blue. North Carolina isn't diversifying that quickly, either. NC's voting population was 28% nonwhite in 2010 and 31% nonwhite now. Compare that to Georgia, whose voting population is 41% nonwhite and added nearly one million people of color in the last decade.
abc goes into a lot of detail very well about how Trump's micro-tageting of non-Black minority voters in NC paid off dividends. Trump mopped up with Lumbee Nation and Robeson County as a whole, which had gone Democratic in 10 straight elections before 2016. Trump flipped it in 2016 and quadrupled his margin there in 2020.
Even as Democrats gain in the research triangle suburbs, they keep crashing in the exurbs. Biden fared worse than Obama did in 12 of the 19 counties in the Research Triangle because it's a red wall the second you get out of Charlotte, Raleigh, and their inner-ring suburbs. Democrats had room to gain in the cities and inner-ring suburbs, but they had a lot of room to fall in the exurbs and rural areas. The degree to which Democrats have crashed with non-college white voters in NC is obscene. Obama lost non-college whites 67-33. Biden lost them 78-22. One silver lining for Democrats is that they've probably bottomed out here.
Democrats' gains in the Research Triangle with college whites have been canceled out by the GOP turbo-charging its margins in the all-white exurbs, while smart micro-targeting in rural nonwhite areas have helped the GOP overcome the fact that Democrats are gaining in the areas that are growing and diversifying the fastest. When you put this all together, Democrats win about the exact same percentage of the white vote and the exact same percentage of the nonwhite vote as they have in the last 10 years, and NC is poised to remain a swing state for the foreseeable futre.
