Trump, and Changing Demographics, Are Helping Turn North Carolina Blue

Over the past three election cycles, Republicans in North Carolina won the governor’s mansion, ousted Democratic U.S. Senator Kay Hagan, and built a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature. But with Donald Trump imperiling down-ballot candidates and population demographics in the state undergoing a shift, those gains could soon be reversed.

Lagging by 9 points in the latest state poll, Trump is poised to give Hillary Clinton something Democrats in North Carolina have only achieved twice in the last 40 years: the state’s 15 electoral votes. What’s more, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper leads Republican incumbent Pat McCrory by 7 points, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC/Marist poll released Friday, and Deborah Ross, a former state representative running to replace Republican U.S. Senator Richard Burr, is up by 2 points. (The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.)