North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) recently suggested that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins North Carolina in the November general election, she will become the next President of the United States.
“It’s close here in North Carolina. It always is. This was Biden-Harris’s closest loss in 2020, only 1.3 percent,” Cooper said via The Hill last week. “So the fact that Kamala Harris, as Vice President of the United States, has been to North Carolina 17 times shows that she cares about our state. She knows that we are in play.”
“And she knows that if she wins North Carolina, she is the next President of the United States because Trump has no other pathway,”
I made the same assumption before doing a deeper dive.
With its 16 electoral votes, a win in North Carolina for Democrat nominee Kamala Harris would decrease the odds of winning for Republican nominee Donald Trump – But, a Harris win there wouldn’t offset losses in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia, three states that are not guaranteed for the vice president.
According to the Real Clear Politics aggregate of top pollsters, Pennsylvania is tied. And the Keystone State is winnable for Trump as he carried it in 2016.
Also, according to the same aggregate of top pollsters, Harris is ahead by only .01 percent in Georgia. Given the Peachtree State is still slightly right-leaning, a win here for Trump would be far from an upset. Lastly, although Harris is ahead in Wisconsin by 1.5 percent per the RCP polling aggregate, polls there had a strong left lean in 2016 and 2020. If presidential pollsters haven’t changed their methodologies in Wisconsin from the previous two elections, Trump may very well be ahead there despite RCP’s average. In fact, a 5-point Harris lead in the RCP polling average still might not be enough for her to carry the state.
President Joe Biden entered Election Day with a 6.7 percent lead in the Badger State but won it by just 0.7 percent.
Based on a flurry of polling data from 2016 and 2020, Harris’s campaign shouldn’t be comfortable with any lead of less than 7 percentage points in Wisconsin. We explain it here in Harris vs Trump: Beware of Wisconsin polls, Democrats.
So while a Harris win in the Tarheel State is certainly possible and would create additional paths to victory for the vice president, it wouldn’t put her over the top because she’s volatile in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia. That stated, a win for Harris in North Carolina would 1) increase Harris’s chances of winning Georgia and 2) force Trump to run the table in all three of the aforementioned states, as well as Arizona, in order to win the election.
Perhaps Gov. Cooper is banking on the assumption that a Harris win in North Carolina should solidify a Georgia victory as the two state’s electorates are similar and the former is slightly more conservative than the latter. And while that’s true, a North Carolina win for Harris would increase the odds of her winning Georgia, it still wouldn’t take much for Harris to win North Carolina and lose Georgia.
Given the North Carolina polling appears to have had a slight left lean in the past twp presidential elections, Harris’ Campaign should want its candidate to have at least a +2 percentage point lead in RCP’s polling aggregate heading into Election Day. As of this writing, Trump leads there by 0.7 per RCP’s aggregate polling.
