5 Days Out: Will Biden Win North Carolina?
Everything you need to know for Thursday, Oct. 29: Why Trump (Trump!) is gaining Black and Hispanic support + Tim Moore’s friends and family plan
Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020
5️⃣ days until the election.
2️⃣ days until early voting ends (you can register when you vote at EV sites). Find your EV site here. Find out how long you’ll have to vote early in Wake County here and Durham County here.
8️⃣ 3️⃣ days until the inauguration.
Update!
Yesterday—extrapolating from the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday in a Wisconsin case—I wrote that North Carolina’s absentee-ballot extension was probably DOA. I am happy to report I was wrong.
On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court declined to take up ballot-extension cases in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Amy Coney Barrett did not participate in either decision.
The Court split 4–4 on the Pennsylvania decision a week ago. Anticipating Barrett’s confirmation, PA Republicans asked the Court to reconsider. In a dissent on Wednesday, Justice Samuel Alito echoed Brett Kavanaugh’s argument from Monday, claiming state courts cannot interpret state constitutions when it comes to elections because the Constitution gives legislatures the power to set election laws.
Alito also insisted the Court could take up the Pennsylvania case after the election—which could lead to the Court throwing out thousands of legally cast ballots.
“There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution,” Alito wrote.
More important for our purposes, in a 5–3 vote, the Court also declined the NCGOP’s request to shorten the absentee-ballot deadline from Nov. 12, the date set by a voting rights group’s settlement with the State Board of Elections, to Nov. 6, the date set by state law.
Justice Clarence Thomas would have granted the NCGOP’s request to overturn the settlement. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Alito would have placed an injunction on it—effectively the same thing. Writing for himself and Alito, Gorsuch argued:
There is no ground for thinking that the election “schedule” has been “disrupted”: North Carolina stands fully equipped to conduct its election on November 3. Nor is COVID like the “natural disasters” the [State Board of Elections] has pointed to in the past (e.g., hurricanes or power outages) that can disrupt the mechanics of running an election, especially given that the General Assembly has long known about the pandemic’s challenges and expressly prepared for them. Finally, the change the Board adopted was deemed “unnecessary” by the General Assembly when it retained the statutory ballot receipt deadline after considering COVID’s impact on election processes.
Put another way: The combination of a deadly pandemic and a sabotaged Postal Service running slower than molasses going uphill in January doesn’t matter if a self-interested General Assembly decides it’s disinterested in counting the votes of its political adversaries.
That’s definitely what Madison had in mind.
The five justices—the three liberals plus Chief Justice Roberts and, shockingly, Justice Kavanaugh—who approved North Carolina’s extended deadline did not explain their reasoning.
Today’s Number: 16
Percentage points by which the electoral racial gap—i.e., the difference in presidential preference between white and nonwhite voters—has shrunk between 2016 and 2020, according to The New York Times’s Upshot.
In 2020, Donald Trump is losing ground to Joe Biden among white voters (especially outside of the Deep South) …
Overall, Mr. Trump leads by 21 points among white voters without a degree, 58 percent to 37 percent, compared with his 29-point edge (59-30) in the final polls in 2016. … By contrast, white college graduates back Mr. Biden by 21 points in recent polls, up from a 13-point edge for Mrs. Clinton in the final polls four years ago.
… while making significant gains with Black and Hispanic voters.
In recent national polls, Mr. Biden leads by 42 points among nonwhite voters, 66 percent to 24 percent. It’s about nine points worse than Mrs. Clinton’s 51-point lead in the final 2016 surveys.
Ironically for the Build the Wall guy, Latinos may be his only remaining path to victory.
The president’s strength among nonwhite voters … helps him counter a serious weakness among older white voters in the pivotal state of Florida and in other Sun Belt battlegrounds, including Nevada, which Mrs. Clinton carried four years ago. …
Nonwhite voters were likelier to say they thought Mr. Trump would do a better job handling “law and order” than they were to say they supported him over Mr. Biden.
As with whites, there’s a pronounced gender gap.
In Times/Siena surveys since September, Mr. Biden has a mere seven-point lead among Hispanic men and a 37-point lead among Hispanic women—even larger than the 20-point gender gap among white voters. And while the gender gap is smaller among Black voters, Mr. Biden has a relatively poor 78-11 lead among Black men in the Times/Siena poll.
—> WHAT’S GOING ON? I’ll direct your attention to Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, written in 2009 by two (now) UNC-Chapel Hill professors, Jonathan Weiler and Marc Hetherington, which I know almost by heart because it was central to my hot mess of a master’s thesis.
From Chapter 7:
African Americans are, in fact, the most authoritarian racial group in the United States by far. Yet, for obvious historical reasons, they remain an overwhelmingly Democratic group …. Although it is plausible to think that the Republican issue agenda might be attractive to African Americans in the future, they are a group that is clearly tethered to the Democratic Party for now.
In other words, the GOP might make inroads in the Black community if it weren’t for the racism.
Nonwhites tend to score high on authoritarianism measures, meaning they are (according to Hetherington and Weiler) “more likely to feel threatened by, and dislike, outgroups; more likely to desire muscular responses to conflict; less politically well-informed; and less likely to change their way of thinking when new information might change their deeply held beliefs.”
Authoritarians “tend to feel alienated from many things, including politics. As a result, they tend to vote at much lower rates.”
Trump, an authoritarian, is also a demagogue—a charismatic figure who presents conflicts in Manichean terms and speaks in uncomplicated language. He offers simple solutions to complex problems, asserts that he alone can fix them, and blames others when things go sideways.
Trump’s style is tailor-made for authoritarians—both white conservatives and a proportion of nonwhites. Part of his success has come from appealing to people who felt alienated by politics.
Yeah, but: 1) Biden is still far ahead with nonwhites. 2) Trump’s gains with nonwhites are matched by Biden’s gains with whites, which helps Biden in the Midwestern states he needs to win the Electoral College. The real question is whether any of this augers a trend or disappears once Trump is off the stage.
—> BY THE WAY: If you’re wondering why African Americans (and nonwhites generally) score high on authoritarianism measures, it’s a good question. Unfortunately, the bulk of the authoritarianism literature focuses on whites. One exception is a 2011 article from Political Psychology, which found that traditional explanations of authoritarianism—low education, low income, lack of cognitive complexity—don’t work.
Instead, the paper posits that:
Ethnic minorities are far more likely than whites to experience prejudice and discrimination as part of their daily lives, a condition that can lead to a state of psychological self-defensiveness against future threats. This psychological defensiveness may lead members of stigmatized groups such as ethnic minorities to adopt attitudes that provide a psychological sense of security, including authoritarian attitudes.
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> Will Biden Actually Win North Carolina?
Tl;dr: I don’t know. But if Joe Biden does win here, Trump has no path to 270.
That’s not to say Biden needs North Carolina. He’s up 9 in Wisconsin, 8 in Michigan, and 5 in Pennsylvania. Even if Trump scores an upset in Pennsylvania, Biden has outs in Florida (+1.4), Arizona (+3), Georgia (+1.4), and Iowa (+1.5).
But Biden wants North Carolina. A call for Biden on Tuesday night would help extinguish Trump’s voter-fraud conspiracies. Biden also wants to—as Roy Cooper put it—carry Cal Cunningham over the line. So five days out, let’s take stock.
The polls
538 average: Biden 49.1–47.1
Real Clear Politics average: Biden 48.4–47.7
Gravis Marketing: Biden 49–46
Harper (for Civitas): Biden 47–46
PPP: Biden 51–47
Ipsos: Biden 49–48
RMG: Biden 48–47
YouGov: Biden 51–47
Meredith College: Biden 48–44
Data for Progress: Biden 48–44
Rasmussen: Trump 49–48
Survey USA for WRAL: Tie 48–48
I’ll focus on the Survey USA poll for two reasons: 1) It’s the highest-rated firm of the bunch, and 2) its final North Carolina poll of 2016, which showed Trump breaking away, captured something everyone else missed.
Two weeks ago, when Trump was hospitalized with COVID, Survey USA had Biden up 50–45, so, here again, there’s a late break to Trump or there’s noise.
Let’s see what the crosstabs say.
Gender
Men: Trump 55–41
Women: Biden 54–41
Age
18–34: Biden 53–44
45–49: Trump 48–44
50–64: Trump 49–47
65+: Trump 51–47
Race
White: Trump 62–35
Black: Biden 90–6
Hispanic Biden 57–39
Asian: Biden 45–41
Region
Charlotte: Trump 53-41
Greensboro: Trump 52-46
Raleigh: Biden 59-37
Southern: Trump: 52-45
Stray observations
Trump is winning 9% of “very liberal” voters. 🧐
Survey USA has the electorate at 40% Republican, 38% Democrat, 22% independent. By contrast, Meredith College has a 36–31.5–32 sample. Survey USA has 67% white, 19% Black, 7% Hispanic, 7% Asian polling universe; Meredith’s is 67% white, 22% Black, 12% other.
46% of those polled recall voting for Trump in 2016; 37% recall voting for Clinton. The actual 2016 results were 49.8% to 46.2%.
Biden wins people who have already voted (43% of the sample) 57-40. Trump is winning people who say they are 100% certain to vote (46%) 55-42 and who are almost certain to vote (10%) 53-46.
Biden is winning military households 51-47.
Biden is leading on handling the coronavirus 47-46; Trump is winning on the economy 52-43; they’re tied on public safety.
2% of whites, 2% of Blacks, and 4% of whites are undecided. 14% of Asians say they are voting for a third-party candidate.
—> WHAT DOES THIS TELL US? A few things.
Relative to other polls, Survey USA has a Trump-friendly electorate. (That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.)
Compared to Survey USA’s poll two weeks ago, Trump improved among men and voters with just a high school education. (Caution: When you start pulling out subgroups, you get large margins of error.)
Trump needs every voter who says they’ll show up to show up.
—> VERDICT: I’d rather be Biden than Trump, and not just because North Carolina is a luxury. Additional evidence:
Republican groups are investing big in two congressional districts that should be safe—an indication that internal polling shows trouble.
Dan Forest is a dead man walking.
Thom Tillis hasn’t led in a quality poll this month.
However: This is North Carolina, so I’ll hedge my bets. The numbers say Biden wins by 2, Cunningham by 2–3, and Cooper by 6–8. Then again, I was pretty confident four years ago.
LOCAL & STATE
—> Tim Moore’s Friends and Family Plan
I wish I had the space to do it justice, but Dan Kane’s investigation into how House Speaker Tim Moore pushed through the 751 South development while his legal partner was working on behalf of 751 is really something.
The News & Observer found:
▪ [Gene Davis Jr.] and Moore have worked on several legal cases together, and Moore uses Davis’s office in Raleigh for legal work when he’s at the legislature. Clients Moore and Davis have co-represented over the years include a regional nonprofit based in Robeson County that was fighting to stay open after auditors found millions in questionable spending by its executive director and other officials.
▪ One of Davis’s companies, which also included a 751 South developer as a co-owner, has paid Moore for legal work, and Davis’s firm has paid attorney and former state Sen. Cal Cunningham for legal work. Cunningham has represented the 751 South developers for nearly a decade.
▪ Davis and [GOP lobbyist Reggie] Holley, business partners with offices that have long shared the same building, won legislation that created a path for state approval of a bail insurance business they had been building with others months earlier. Moore gave one of the bail business partners a heads up that the legislation would be moving forward, the partner said in an email to a lobbyist that the partner shared with The News & Observer.
▪ Holley and Davis now have influential posts in the UNC System at a time when Moore’s name continues to surface as a candidate for the system’s top jobs. Last year, the House voted Holley onto the UNC Board of Governors, and the Republican-dominated board appointed Davis, a former Wake County Democratic Party vice-chairman, to UNC-Chapel Hill’s board of trustees.
To sum:
Those connections show overlap between Moore’s work on behalf of the public and the business interests of Moore and his associates. They shed new light on Moore’s dual roles as a legislative leader who can kill or advance major legislation, and a private attorney in a state where many clients aren’t required to be disclosed.
There’s a lot more, including a potential misdemeanor for not disclosing financial interests.
NATION & WORLD
—> The Brief: 3 Stories to Read Today
We’re screwed. “Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean—known as the ‘sleeping giants of the carbon cycle’—have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast. … The discovery of potentially destabilised slope frozen methane raises concerns that a new tipping point has been reached that could increase the speed of global heating.” Meanwhile, in Fantasyland: “President Trump will open up all 16.7 million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development … stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades.”
Trump’s lenders forgave $287 million in debt related to a Chicago skyscraper. “When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. For most individuals or businesses, that would have been a recipe for ruin. But tax-return data, other records, and interviews show that rather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack—exactly what he seemed to have been counting on.”
Asylum denial rates continue to climb, and the system’s still capricious and random. “Despite the partial court shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, this year immigration judges managed to decide the second-highest number of asylum decisions in the last two decades. The rate of denial continued to climb to a record high of 71.6 percent, up from 54.6 percent during the last year of the Obama Administration in FY 2016. … The outcome for asylum seekers continued to depend on the identity of the immigration judge assigned to hear the case. The New York Immigration Court led the country in having the widest disparity among judges serving on the same court. Depending upon the judge, denial rates ranged from 95 percent down to 3 percent.”
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow!