Hurricane Helene's Political Disaster

Authored by Ryan Bonifay via RealClearPolitics,

Hurricane Helene devastated large swaths of western North Carolina, with entire towns wiped away or forever altered. The human disaster will be felt for decades. But there’s another impending disaster no one is talking about – a political one.

North Carolina is a perennial swing state with a penchant for split-ticket voting. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state by less than 1.5 percentage points. In 2008, Barack Obama clinched the state for the Democrats by a mere 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million votes. This year, North Carolina is once again a battleground state, with both political parties spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and both presidential nominees are spending significant time here. In the Tar Heel State, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are literally fighting for every single vote.

But Hurricane Helene didn’t just wipe out towns. It may also wipe out people’s right to vote. Tens of thousands of voters are homeless or temporarily camped out far from their homes. While the North Carolina Board of Elections is tweaking rules to make it easier to vote, residents in the most severely damaged areas probably have other, bigger problems on their minds – like missing relatives, lost livelihoods, children who can’t go to school, filing insurance claims, just to name a few. The last thing on their to-do lists is remembering to reregister to vote at their new address before Oct. 6, which has since come and gone. 

There is an unspoken question that needs to be voiced: What happens if hundreds of thousands of voters in western North Carolina can’t vote in the 2024 election?

The disaster declaration in western North Carolina encompasses 25 counties, comprising 1.3 million registered voters, of which 974,514 voted for president in 2020.

Currently, registered Republicans make up 37.9% of western North Carolina voters compared to 28.2% in the rest of the state. Registered Democrats make up only 22.8% of western North Carolina voters compared to 33.2% in the rest of the state. In 2020, Trump won 604,119 votes to Joe Biden’s 356,902 votes in those 25 counties. 

In other words, western North Carolina is Republican country, even with deep blue Asheville sitting in the heart of the mountains. In the closest election in recent history, Republicans don’t have 600,000 votes to spare.

In order for a Republican candidate to have a fighting chance of winning statewide in North Carolina, they have to drive up their margin of victory in the western part of the state. Since 2016, Republican presidential and Senate candidates have won by a margin of 23.4% to 27.9% in western North Carolina. In those same elections, all Republicans (Trump, Tillis, Budd), except former Sen. Richard Burr, also lost the rest of the state.

Compare those margins to losing Republican candidates. In 2016, the incumbent governor, Pat McCrory, won western North Carolina by 19.3%. Four years later, Republican Dan Forest only eked out an 18.7% margin in the west. McCrory lost the rest of the state by 4.4%, and Forest lost it by 9.5%.

In other words, statewide Republicans can’t win North Carolina without soaking up every red vote to the west.

As of Oct. 7, absentee ballot requests in western North Carolina totaled 46,094, accounting for 15.7% of statewide requests. Some of those ballots will never reach their intended recipients. That is concerning, but the bigger impact will come from in-person early voting, slated to begin October 17. In 2020, 70% of Trump’s vote in western North Carolina came from in-person early voting sites. It is not yet clear how many early voting sites are damaged, but the wide expanse of Helene’s damage suggests it will be significant. According to Axios, “infrastructure, accessibility to voting sites, and postal services remain severely disrupted” in 13 counties, accounting for 552,514 registered voters.

With North Carolina growing increasingly close, hundreds of thousands of Tar Heel voters who are unable to vote could doom Republicans chances here – and nationwide – over the next 27 days. While it is possible for Trump to win 270 electoral votes while losing North Carolina, it makes a narrow path to the White House that much narrower.

Playing around with the electoral map produces a number of scenarios in which Trump comes short of 270 electoral votes without North Carolina. One scenario gives Trump Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania while losing Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. He loses that election 265 to 273.

Getting western North Carolina back on its feet has to be the priority for the federal and state governments. However, with such an important election at our doorstep, it would be irresponsible to ignore the political implications of this historic disaster. It’s not just about disenfranchising voters – which is important enough.

Imagine for a moment that this election comes down to a razor-thin margin in storm-torn North Carolina. Allegations start flying – about lost ballots, late ballots, ballots sent to the wrong precincts, etc. It will be Florida circa 2000 on steroids, and nobody wants to go through that again. Our country is already fraying at the seams with little trust in our democratic institutions. Talk about throwing a match into a powder keg.

To prevent this election outcome from being dictated by a 100-year storm, it is incumbent on the Board of Elections to do absolutely everything in its power to make sure western North Carolinians, especially those in rural and most isolated parts of the impacted area, have every opportunity to cast their ballots. It’s also incumbent on Republicans to start tackling this problem now. Don’t wait until Nov. 6 to sound the alarm.

No one wants to politicize a storm that has destroyed so many lives, but that’s exactly what will happen if we don’t get this right.

Ryan Bonifay is the director of data & analytics at ColdSpark and lives in Lexington, North Carolina. Bonifay has worked and served as data director for several campaigns and organizations across the southeast, including the Republican National Committee, Engage Texas, Texans for Greg Abbott, and former U.S. Senator David Perdue.