A leading nonpartisan political forecaster predicts that Vice President Kamala Harris will defeat former President Donald Trump in three key states in the 2024 election.
According to the Cook Political Report, North Carolina is no longer Republican but undecided. The Tar Heel State is one of seven battleground states across the country that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential election.
Former President Barack Obama was the last Democrat to win the state in the race for the White House in the 2008 election.
Four years ago, Trump narrowly defeated President Biden in this state. However, after Biden’s disastrous performance in the debate against Trump in late June, the former president’s lead in North Carolina grew to mid-single digits.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Hendrick Center for Automotive Excellence on the Scott Northern Wake Campus of Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina on August 16, 2024. (ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)
After Biden ended his 2024 re-election bid on July 21 and Harris replaced her boss at the top of the Democratic national ticket, the North Carolina race became one with a potential margin of error.
“Trump has not lost political ground since July; on the contrary, Harris has improved Biden’s share of the vote by seven percentage points,” said Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, explaining the change in her ratings.
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“In other words, the race is getting tighter, not because Harris is cutting into Trump’s vote share, but because Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are coming back to power,” Walter added.
Trump is determined not to erase North Carolina from his memory and has campaigned in the state three times since Biden dropped out of the race five and a half weeks ago.
Former President Donald Trump speaks from behind bulletproof glass during a campaign rally at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame in Asheboro, North Carolina, on August 21, 2024. (Photo by PETER ZAY/AFP via Getty Images)
In addition, the Trump campaign has spent $8.3 million more on ads in North Carolina than the Harris campaign since the president dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, according to national ad tracking firm AdImpact. However, the Harris campaign currently has $30 million worth of ad reservations in the state, compared to just $7.3 million for the Trump campaign.
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The Cook Political Report now joins another leading nonpartisan political expert, Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, in rating North Carolina as a tie.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. (AP Photos)
Walter also brought about a change in two states where presidential elections are hotly contested and where Democrats have won reliably for decades: Minnesota and New Hampshire went from being Democratic to probably Democratic states.
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In the weeks following the Biden-Trump debate, polls suggested Trump was making gains in Minnesota, where Republicans had not won a presidential election in over half a century, and in New Hampshire, where Democrats had won five consecutive White House races.
However, Walter said, “Harris has succeeded in regrouping and re-energizing the Democratic coalition … and in doing so has put states like Minnesota and New Hampshire out of reach for the Trump campaign.”
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