To describe North Carolina as one of America’s chief political battlegrounds is a well-worn cliché. I’ve certainly done my part to wear it out. In past columns, I’ve called our state a “flirt” (which happens to be a reddish shade of purple) that still contains just enough split-ticket voters to surprise even the most experienced of political prognosticators.
A week before the election, I wrote that North Carolina was the prototypical “state in play,” featuring competitive races for president and a dozen other statewide offices as well as a spirited contest by Democrats to break the Republicans’ supermajorities in the North Carolina House and Senate.
Well, the votes are in — and it’s time to give that trusty cliché a few more scuffs and creases.
Donald Trump won North Carolina for the third time, but once again, the race proved competitive. At this writing, his margin of victory is more than three percentage points, or about 190,000 votes — a higher margin than he won in his 2020 and 2016 campaigns. At the same time, and as was widely expected, Democrat Josh Stein defeated disgraced Republican nominee Mark Robinson for governor with 55% of the vote — the widest margin in a gubernatorial race in decades.