So What Happened in the 2024 Election pt. 2

Today I look at what happened in North Carolina, Nevada and California. Also a Musical Interlude that might be my best ever.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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A quick update on last week’s story about a Syrian prisoner liberated on camera by CNN reporter Clarissa Ward. It turns out the man in question served as a lieutenant in the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate.

Welcome to Part Two of my post-2024 election post-mortem.

Today, I will focus on a few key swing states and one solidly blue state. (There has been a request to examine what happened in Georgia, so I will move on to the Peach State next.)

First, let’s take a look at the Tarheel State.

North Carolina

US Department of State

In 2020, Trump won North Carolina by a narrow margin of 1.3 points — 49.9 to 48.6. In 2024, Trump won the state by nearly 2 points more (3.2), even though Harris received approximately 31,000 more votes than Biden (NC was one of five states where Harris did better than Biden in raw votes). Her problem was that Trump received 140,000 more votes than in 2020.

The story in North Carolina is remarkably similar to what we saw in Wisconsin. In blue counties, Harris outpaced Biden. In the Raleigh-Durham area, she topped Biden in three out of four blue counties (she missed in Durham by 238 votes!). She barely trailed Biden in Greensboro and Mecklenburg (where Charlotte is located) but bested him in the counties surrounding Winston-Salem and Wilmington. Around Asheville, in Buncombe County, she not only did better than Biden, but Trump did worse than his 2020 performance.

In red, rural districts, she often held her own. Take Cabarrus County, a solid red country near Charlotte. Harris got more votes than Biden, but she lost by a smaller margin than him! In fact, this happened in 12 counties in North Carolina — most of them solidly red counties.

Interestingly, in the predominantly black counties along the Virginia border, Harris underperformed across the board — both in raw votes and percentages. In some other states, we’ve seen a few examples of Harris underperforming among Black and Hispanic voters, but the divide in North Carolina is particularly interesting, especially since she did fine in Black metropolitan areas.

The problem for Harris is that she needed to do substantially better than Biden did in 2020 to win the state, and that didn’t happen. Like Wisconsin, Trump did better across the board. Most of his pickups came in rural areas, particularly in the eastern part of the state, but he came close to matching his 2020 performance in blue areas. That was more than enough for him to win.

For close to 30 years, North Carolina electoral votes have been tantalizingly out of reach for Democrats. Barack Obama won the state in 2008, but every year since, Republicans have prevailed, always by a margin of less than four points.

• While it was a bad Election Night for Harris in NC, down-ballot Democrats had much to cheer. Their candidates won a host of statewide races, including Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and a highly contested Supreme Court race. They even broke the GOP’s veto-proof majority in the state legislature. However, since North Carolina is a democracy in name only, Republicans in the state legislature rammed through legislation this month that will take power away from the new governor and attorney general. Also, North Carolina Republicans flipped three House seats as part of an aggressive redistricting plan. Indeed, that gerrymander is the reason Republicans will continue to control the House of Representatives. Still, it wasn’t a bad night for North Carolina Democrats overall.

Nevada

Democrats have won Nevada every year since 2008, but their luck ran out this year.