Republican candidates earned victories across North Carolina. Here’s how they did it
The day before the election, Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign manager sounded bullish on North Carolina.
“We believe that the early voting numbers, well, they really speak for themselves,” Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a conference call. “We have really strong leads in states like North Carolina.“
Except they didn’t.
For the first time since North Carolina began early voting 20 years ago, Republicans won the early vote up and down the ballot.
Biden and other Democrats won mail-in absentee voting, which the pandemic pushed to record numbers. But President Donald Trump and other Republicans won early, in-person votes and nearly four times as many North Carolinians voted early in person as by mail.
And as they’ve traditionally done, Republicans got more votes on Election Day itself.
That not only helped Trump and Sen. Thom Tillis scratch out apparent victories in the state, but helped Republicans capture six of the 10 Council of State races and appear to sweep all eight major judicial races. They picked up seats in the N.C. House and kept their majority in the Senate.
Republicans credit grassroots organizing that mixed old-fashioned door knocking with sophisticated targeting.
“The strength of the ground game is what kept all the Republican candidates in their races,” said GOP strategist Paul Shumaker, who worked for Tillis. “We saw no semblance of a Democratic ground game anywhere.”
State GOP Chairman Michael Whatley said the party made 10 million voter contacts, many through calls and texts and later with actual door knocking. Among the targets: Republicans who didn’t vote in recent elections.
“We aggressively went after low-propensity voters and tried to make sure we brought those people back in,” Whatley said Wednesday.
Republicans estimate they got about 30% of such voters to cast ballots. They say failing to capture them was one reason so many polls suggested Democratic wins, even a “blue wave.”
“The polls were all wrong because they don’t take into consideration first-time and unlikely voters that the Trump campaign targeted,” said Larry Shaheen, a Republican consultant from Mecklenburg County.
Many polls, however, correctly showed races within the margin of error.
Whatley said Trump’s rallies — he made nine visits to the state since August — helped pump up enthusiasm among voters in the party’s rural and suburban base.
Democrats say they also made millions of voter contacts. Theirs came mainly through phone calls, texts and digital advertising and, because of the pandemic, less on door-knocking or personal visits. Unlike Trump, their top candidates avoided large gatherings when they visited the state.
“The Democrats’ strategy on the ground game was consistent as their strategy of campaigning,” Shumaker said. “That was to stay home and stay in the basement.”
On Tuesday night, U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat who won a 17th congressional term, said he was disappointed with the results in North Carolina and in many states.
“We are going to have to examine this very carefully and evaluate what kind of appeals we make, what kind of campaigns we run in the future,” he told a reporter. “There will be lessons learned.”
One state Democratic Party official said Trump’s loyal North Carolina following created headwinds for all Democratic candidates.
GOP successes came despite being outspent in key races. In House District 98 in north Mecklenburg, for example, Democratic Rep. Christy Clark raised more than $930,000 in her rematch with former GOP Rep. John Bradford, who had raised $274,000. She got donations from around the country as well as $350,000 from the party.
Bradford won Tuesday on the strength of early, in-person votes and Election Day votes. He’ll be the only Republican in the county’s 17-member legislative delegation.
“(Republicans) had to overcome the fundraising and expenditure advantage the Democrats had and I think they were left with little option but to put the effort into the turnout operation and the field (organizing),” said David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College. “They mobilized their supporters better than Democrats did. It’s a pretty straight-forward kind of formula this year.”
Bill Warford, 34, a machine shop owner in Mineral Springs, said Tuesday he was voting for the first time. He said he didn’t follow politics before he and his wife moved in with his wife’s retired conservative grandfather. But her grandfather pressed the idea that it was important to vote, and to vote Republican.
“There’s a lot about politics I still don’t know,” Warford told a reporter Tuesday. “But my wife’s grandpa just made a point of explaining to me how important this election is.”
Staff writers Austin Weinstein of the Observer and Dan Kane of the News & Observer contributed.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 4:50 PM with the headline "Republican candidates earned victories across North Carolina. Here’s how they did it."
