6 quick thoughts on the election results
Brutal Robinson wipeout sinks the Republican LG, AG candidates
North Carolina’s long election season is over. I can’t say there were many huge surprises in the results, but there were some clear answers to the questions we had going into Election Day. Here are 6 of my quick takes.
Polls accurately captured Mark Robinson’s brutal wipeout
I’ll admit, I was skeptical when I saw poll results showing Josh Stein up double-digits over Mark Robinson. In a lean-red state like North Carolina, is such an electoral landslide still even possible?
Turns out the answer is yes. This is the bluest map I’ve seen in North Carolina in a long time.
Here’s the list of counties that Dan Forest won in 2020 while losing to Gov. Roy Cooper, but Stein won last night. It’s pretty remarkable:
Alamance
Brunswick
Cabarrus
Lee
Lenoir
Nash
Franklin
Jackson
Transylvania
Henderson
Robinson sinks Republican candidates for lieutenant governor, attorney general
It’s usually a mistake to attribute an election result to a single factor, but it’s no coincidence that the two candidates who hugged Robinson the tightest both lost their statewide races.
In the closing days of the campaign, Democrats sought to tie virtually every statewide candidate to the beleaguered gubernatorial candidate — with mixed success. In most cases, it simply didn’t stick.
But AG candidate Dan Bishop was one of Robinson’s first and most ardent supporters (the “sidekick” ad was pretty effective, it seems), and lieutenant governor candidate Hal Weatherman printed up yard signs and campaign buttons touting a Robinson/Weatherman “ticket.”
Hunt name still carries weight in Wilson, Nash
I want to dig deeper into the lieutenant governor race data, but my quick glance at the results shows that the Hunt name may still carry some weight in the ancestral homelands of the Hunt and Cooper families.
Rachel Hunt, daughter of four-term governor Jim Hunt, outperformed other candidates in Nash County — home of Gov. Roy Cooper — and Wilson County, her father’s home county. Nash County was a flip from red to blue.
New Hanover, Watauga no longer bellwether counties?
Historically, these two counties were seen as an indication of how the statewide vote would go. That didn’t happen this year. Both New Hanover and Watauga counties went for Kamala Harris and most statewide Democratic candidates. Obviously, the state as a whole went for Donald Trump and most statewide Republican candidates.
Is Anson the new bellwether county?
For the first time in decades, Anson County went red — and not just in the presidential race. It also voted for Republican candidates Mike Causey (insurance), Luke Farley (labor), and Valerie Zachary (Court of Appeals). There are so few votes in Anson County that it doesn’t have a huge impact on the statewide results, but it very well may be the next canary in the coalmine.
Don’t count on a working supermajority
Going into the last long session, Republicans were one vote short of a supermajority in the state House. Then-House Speaker Tim Moore (now a congressman-elect) said he was confident in a “working supermajority,” and that ultimately came to pass.
After last night, Republicans again appear to be one vote short of the 72 votes they need in the House to override a gubernatorial veto. But any sort of working supermajority will be much harder to come by.
The most reliable crossover vote, Rep. Michael Wray, will no longer be in the General Assembly after losing in the Democratic primary. Rep. Tricia Cotham won re-election, but now just counts as a Republican vote.
That leaves Reps. Garland Pierce, Shelly Willingham and Cecil Brockman as perhaps the most persuadable. We’ll see how well governor-elect Stein manages his caucus.