Election 2008: How did Obama win NC?

[ccharles000]

We called North Carolina for Obama yesterday, and you can read some of my first thoughts about what it meant for the state to not only go Democratic, but elect the first African-American president, here.

I'll be writing more soon about what Obama's three victories in the South mean, disproving the pundits like Tom Schaller who vociferously claimed it couldn't happen. In July of 2008, Schaller declared with typical bombast in The New York Times that "Obama can write off Georgia and North Carolina" and gave him only the smallest of chances for winning Virginia.

Thankfully for Democrats, Obama didn't listen to him.

Obama’s success in winning 18.6 million votes in 13 Southern states and driving record turnout across the region – while turnout nationally remained flat – will hopefully banish the “write off the South” mentality in Democratic circles for a while. It was always dubious -- and a recipe for long-term political suicide -- given that the South is the fastest-growing region in the country, home to half the nation’s African-American population, and is showing the most rapid demographic change in America.

Now, Democrats also know that mentality is just plain wrong – and Republicans know they can’t take the region for granted.

But back to North Carolina: How did Obama turn North Carolina blue? Here are six key factors that gave him the victory:

1 - Obama mobilized the base: Perhaps more than any other candidate could have, Obama mobilized his core base in North Carolina in record numbers. At the forefront were African-American voters, who added over 300,000 registrations in 2008 and went to Obama by 95%. Obama also won over young voters by large numbers: 74% of those under 30 went Obama.

2 - The growing urban South: Obama won 66% of voters in the state's growing urban areas -- 64% in the Raleigh-Durham area alone. According to Public Policy Polling, urban areas made up 303,000 of the 436,000 votes Obama needed to gain relative to John Kerry's performance in 2004.

3 - The economy: From manufacturing to the state's huge finance sector, the North Carolina economy got hammered this year. Unemployment was inching above 8%. Similar to national trends, 54% of those who were "very worried" about the economy in N.C. voted Obama; he also won 57% of those making less than $50,000 a year. The more the percentage of people worried about the economy went up, so did Obama's numbers.

4 - De-mobilized Republicans: N.C. Republicans, many of whom are aligned with the "values conservative" wing of the party, didn't seem to identify with McCain. The lack of excitement is reflected in the GOP's lackluster registration numbers in 2008. Of the 629,000 new voters registered in North Carolina between January and November, 54% were Democrats, 34% Independents -- and just 12% Republicans.

5 - Election reforms: In a tight race like this one, improvements to the state's voting system likely played a role. In 2007, advocates successfully pushed for same-day registration and voting at early voting sites -- and more than 185,000 North Carolinians took advantage of the law, especially newly-engaged voters who broke to Obama. Through aggressive publicity and education, the state also lowered the number of presidential votes "lost" due to the state's confusing straight-ticket ballot, adding thousands of presidential votes.

6 - Obama fought for it: Last but not least, Democrats won North Carolina because they fought for it. The Obama campaign was smart enough to realize that the above factors and others had made N.C. a battleground opportunity. But critically, Obama also had the resources and strategic sense to take the next step and attempt to capitalize on opportunity -- something the Democrats hadn't seriously tried in decades.

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/11/election-2008-how-did-obama-win-nc.asp

[WI_DEM]

1. In some way this was proof too, that John Edwards didn't offer anything as VP nominee in '04

since it was his home state and represented it in the senate and they lost by 12-points. It's doubtful Edwards would have carried it even if he had been the '04 nominee.

[Lex]

2. and Kerry didn't fight for it

as Obama did

[blm]

5. Kerry could only fight in states that had SOME party infrastructure in place by June 2004.

McAuliffe had written off states like Ohio and NC in the YEARS BEFORE we even the name of the Dem nominee. The Dem nominee TAPS INTO the party infrastructure that EXISTS state by state.

Dean's stewardship of the DNC since 2005 focused on rebuilding those collapsed party infrastructures so Dems COULD compete and put up a fight in every state.

From 2000-2004 there was NO Dem party office in my area of SC that should have had a LOT of natural Dem voters. National party had no interest in supporting one. When we moved to a large city in NC, the party HQ was in the back of a FLOWER SHOP with a few old computers and not enough phone lines - and this was a BLUE COUNTY. The national party would NEVER offer support because they wrote it off by 2000 election cycle and McAuliffe let conditions WORSEN for 2002 and 2004. Talk to Ohio Dem activists and you'll hear how badly they were treated by the national party in 2000, 2002 and 2004 election cycles.

Had Obama gone into 2008 with McAuliffe's collapsed party infrastructure that Kerry was stuck with in 2004, there would have been no way he won in Ohio and NC. Those states would have been easily stolen.

[CatBO]

3. I'd like to think part of it was the voters I registered...

and the voters I called.

The Obama campaign won NC the way they won so many of these surprise states, hard work by volunteers.

[blm]

4. Post Katrina, post Record Home Foreclosures, post Iraq Civil War, entire country was up for grabs in

2008. Combine that political climate swing with a DNC that rebuilt party infrastructures that had been collapsed by previous chairs, and Democratic candidates and voters could GET their votes secured and counted in states like Florida, Ohio and NC.

[Jane Eyre]

6. Technology, volunteerism and working all parts of the state

The Obama campaign utilized technology in every imaginable form to mobilize the state. I received text messages frequently and every couple of hours on election day, reminding me where to vote or volunteer. There was no time or money wasted on efforts to contact me by mail after I voted early, though my S.O. who waited to vote on election day kept receiving mail reminders on an almost daily basis.

The volunteer mobilization was the best I will ever see in my lifetime. No time was wasted with make-work crap to just make volunteers happy and feeling like they were important just to be there, and no useless brainstorming-type meetings. Volunteers went in to do a couple hours of work and they were immediately given the stuff that they needed to do a couple hours of work. No prima donnas either - even the wife of my congressman did volunteer work side-by-side with everyone else.

And while the election may have been won in the urban centers, the Obama campaign did not overlook the more rural "red" counties. There were volunteer organizers in those areas as well. So while the electoral NC map showed only four urban "blue" counties after election day, the fact is that the votes from the other 96 "red" counties narrowed the gap enough statewide to enable Obama to carry the state.

[dascientist]

7. volunteerism was off the chain, somebody even came to my apt to canvas

none of that happened with Kerry or Gore.