Projection: Trump over Harris in NC by 280K+ votes (5.1 percent)

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You know what polls and analyses at election time are like.  (Everybody’s got one.)

Seth Keshel – a renowned vote integrity activist with a lot of street cred in the MAGA camp – has put together some statistical analyses of the states labeled “battleground” by the drive-by media.  He has some findings on North Carolina that should have Trump fans grinning ear-to-ear:

[…] Party registration presents an ugly picture for Democrats, with 96 of 100 counties more Republican or less Democrat than they were in 2020, when Trump still won the state despite the conditions of the 2020 quasi-election with rampant mail-in balloting abuse and before the state adopted Voter I.D. requirements.  This represents a continued collapse for Democrats present since 2008.

What Harris Must Do to Win

Harris is fundamentally the underdog in North Carolina, a state Trump has won twice and one that shows an increasingly Republican registration trend almost everywhere.  I analyzed the Democrat window of opportunity earlier this year and found that Joe Biden, the presumptive nominee at the time, was unlikely to have a ceiling higher than 30,000 votes (less than a point) in victory margin if and only if everything went his way. The same equation remains for Kamala Harris.

For this to come true, Harris would need blowout margins in Wake (metro Raleigh) and Mecklenburg (metro Charlotte) Counties, sustained dominance in the Research Triangle, and sagging Trump margins in the outlying counties, which are overwhelmingly Trump-trending.  There was a window for this narrative to take root in September after Hurricane Helene, but that has closed now that the 29 counties west of the flood line are almost all turning out near or above the current 69.9% share of 2020’s turnout observed statewide:[…]

To further complicate things for Harris, Mecklenburg County is 200,567 votes off its total 2020 turnout with just today’s early vote and Election Day remaining to equal it, with Wake County lagging even further back, 229,187 off.  This is almost certainly due to flaccid urban turnout, especially among black men, a fact much to the chagrin of the state’s Democrat leadership.  16 of 19 counties over the 69.9% statewide turnout mark are Trump-won counties from 2020.

What Trump Must Do to Win

Trump simply has to go with the flow.  Republicans lead the early vote for the first time in history, with a lead of over 50,000 ballots as of this morning.  96 counties are poised to have better Trump outcomes than they did in 2020 based on registration trend alone, and it is widely expected he will accelerate his progression with the state’s black voters, which have collectively sagged below 20% in overall turnout. 

Trump is playing North Carolina safe this year and has several more rallies there to ensure that it doesn’t get Georgia’d. Holding it keeps him at his “Core 235” electoral vote base camp and needing just Georgia and Pennsylvania to punch out along the shortest path to a majority.[…]