by Christopher Cooper In recent decades the United States South has emerged as the most rock-ribbed Republican region in the country, but the 2020 election brought signs that the Republican stranglehold might be loosening. In those elections, Joe Biden won two southern states: Georgia and Virginia. In addition, voters in Georgia sent Democrats to the US Senate, and Democrat Roy Cooper was re-elected as governor of North Carolina. With the 2024 elections now behind us, what do the results tell us about the Democratic Party’s appeal in the US South?  Gibbs Knotts and I addressed this ..read more

 by Christopher Cooper On January 13, 2025 I wrote an analysis of the partisan and demographic patterns of the approximately 60,000 North Carolinians whose ballots are being challenged by Justice Griffin because of" incomplete voter registration." That analysis can be found here. Since then, Justice Griffin has filed a brief with the North Carolina State Supreme Court where he outlines his case in more detail, along with his preferred remedy. In that brief, he explains that, in addition to the 60,723 voters with "incomplete voter registration," that I analyzed before, he is focusing ..read more

 by Christopher Cooper As the fight over approximately 60,000 challenged ballots in North Carolina's Supreme Court Election makes its way through the legal system, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at the challenges to determine whether (and if so, how) challenged voter differ from the overall pool of people who cast a vote in November, 2024 in North Carolina. Because the analysis includes a lot of tables that can look wonky when put into blogger, I put them in a pdf (accessible here).  --- Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire ..read more

 by Christopher Cooper Sometime around noon today, the North Carolina House of Representatives will gavel into session and decide whether to override Governor Cooper's veto on S 382--a bill that was initially intended to streamline licensing for dentists who practice at medical schools, changed to one that included Helene relief in the title, and ultimately transmogrified into one that allocated some money to Helene relief, and added another 120 or so pages that, if passed, will fundamentally change who has access to the levers of power in North Carolina government. In a piece in Made by ..read more

By Susan Roberts and Whitney Ross Manzo Undoubtedly, the defeat of a female presidential candidate in both 2016 and 2024 provides a unique opportunity to examine the continuing presence and nuances of a political gender gap. For example, one of the talking points in the aftermath of the 2024 election was that misogyny played a role in the result.  Prior to 2024's Election Day, social media was flooded with sexist memes depicting Democratic candidate Kamala Harris as a sex worker, a silly woman who only speaks in “word salad,” and alleging that she was too weak to stand up to America’s ene ..read more

 by Christopher Cooper I was going to wait until Friday (after county canvass) to post this, but these takeaways seem fairly durable--no matter what happens Friday. So, with all the caveats I can muster, here are five tentative takeaways from the 2024 elections in North Carolina. 1. North Carolina is Still Purple. For the 11th time in the last 12 elections, a Republican earned all of North Carolina's Electoral College votes for President. And, if that's the only data point you look at, you might think that North Carolina is as red as a Carolina Hurricanes jersey. But, of course, that wa ..read more

By Michael Bitzer Yet again, North Carolina has seen another historic, but traditional, general election: in sum, Republican presidential and Democratic gubernatorial. The more time changes, the more the patterns stay the same. But digging into a 48-hour post-analysis of the Old North State's general election (after finally getting a decent night's sleep), one finds some distinctive patterns and trends that give us a sense of what is going on this year in the electoral body politic of North Carolina. Here's a first attempt to describe and consider some dynamics that I'm going to be very intere ..read more

By Michael Bitzer and Christopher Cooper Let's get the caveats out of the way early--we think that analyzing patterns in early voting data are important. They're important for telling us the method people are using to cast their votes. They're important to give us an early sense of whether we're seeing changes in the normal patterns we see. They're important (in this case) to let us understand how the devestation of Helene might (or might not) be affecting voting patterns. And they're important for reminding us how open and transparent our election system is in North Carolina. Notice that we d ..read more

By Michael Bitzer and Christopher Cooper  In person-early voting kicked off yesterday in North Carolina, but before a single in-person vote was cast, more than 65,000 votes had already been accepted across all 100 counties.  A host of political scientists, political analysis, and political consultants will be reporting patterns from these early voting numbers. Look for posts from the Kevin Bacon of North Carolina politics, Gerry Cohen (no one in #ncpol is more than six degrees removed), as well as from The John Locke Foundation's Andy Jackson, and University of Florida Political Scie ..read more

By Michael Bitzer Amid the absolute devastation and human impact that the remnants of Hurricane Helene left on the South, and particularly on western North Carolina, more and more discussion is focused on the political impact that could be felt in a quarter of North Carolina's counties. I would be remiss if I didn't ask us all--political analysts, journalists/reporters, campaigns and their operatives, and the general public, outside the 25 counties of FEMA designation--to remember these are fellow North Carolinians who have been impacted in a such a manner that very few of us can fully compreh ..read more