Trump and Harris are in North Carolina
The North Carolina Right To Life Race: What Has Happened Since the November 2024 Voting Returned? An NPR Interview with Pincus
There’s one more factor: one that Harris is not campaigning on directly, but that’s nevertheless top of mind to many voters. “I think it’s historical for me as a Black girl,” said Deja Boston.
Over the past year, inflation has leveled out, but the topic is not finished for conservatives. The election is about my wallet, according to the state Republican Party’s booth worker. I didn’t put a lot of money into it, but I did get a $200 paycheck when Mr. Trump was in office. Now, he said, “I’m struggling to make it to payday with money in my pocket.”
Many Republicans see the race differently — even Dr. Bill Pincus, who was manning North Carolina Right To Life’s booth at the fair. Pincus was very passionate about how he believes life begins at conception, and that opposing abortion rights is about protecting life. But when we asked him what the election was about, he said the economy. “I think the real thing is everybody’s hurting, because prices have gone up so much,” he said.
The North Carolina legislature passed a 12-week abortion ban in the wake of the Dobbs decision. It’s one of the main themes of Democratic campaign ads, and that is why Harris is trying to get a law signed that will restore the protections granted to women under the law.
Don’t make me start crying over it. It tears my heart out of my chest,” Lew said. “If they’re impregnated, that’s why.” she said, trying to keep her balance. I need the right to make a decision.
Lew said it was down to reproductive rights and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a women’s right to abortion.
An NPR team went on a hardship assignment to the state fair in order to get a sense of where things stand away from the campaign rallies. Amid the midway rides and fried food stands, we learned three key things about the race in North Carolina.
North Carolina crashed the swing state party in 2024, especially after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket.
All along, political observers had expected six states to decide whether or not former President Donald Trump would return to the White House: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.
The Tarheel State was Trump’s smallest victory in the 2020 campaign, and now both parties are pouring resources into it as the contest enters its final months. Polls show a close race in North Carolina.
The most remarkable thing about our time in North Carolina was how inundated we were by the election. Every commercial break on just about every TV channel is filled, start to finish, with campaign ads. Pre-roll ads can be seen on various social media and video sites.
Vendors were selling masks of Trump’s fist pump and the slogan, “You Missed!”, at the fair. A beef jerky stand converted its tip jar into a straw poll, with one cup featuring an image of Harris and the other of Trump. In this unscientific poll, Trump had a decisive $12-to-$0 lead.
The lieutenant governor of North Carolina is playing an important part in many of the ads that describe the state. Not necessarily his own campaign’s ads, but rather, Democratic attack ads trying to link Republicans up and down the ballot to Robinson’s controversial statements and policy stances, especially his strict opposition to abortion rights.
The Trump campaign and other Republicans have distanced themselves from Robinson, especially in the wake of a CNN report Robinson denies that ties him to racist and offensive comments made on a pornographic website. But he still has his supporters.
“He’s very vocal, he’s very opposed to something,” said New. “But they have taken some of the things he said out of context. The whole paragraph isn’t told. They just see one line and say, ‘Oh, that sounds nasty, let’s put it in there.’”
New is a Republican hardliner. She wears a bright pink Women for RobINSON hat and shirt and said she was voting for the convicted felon. (A New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in a criminal case earlier this year. He’s facing felony charges in three additional cases, as well.)
She’s quick with an answer on everything, except … the outcome of what’s shaping up to be an incredibly tight race in North Carolina. Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have spent a lot of money in the state. Polls show a near-deadlocked race in a state that hasn’t voted Democrat on the presidential level since 2008. New admits it is tighter than he likes. You never know until it’s all done.
We come across Lew and Deborah Love, who are wearing homemade hats that feature a blue comma and a red cursive LA. They voted earlier that day, and likely don’t share many opinions with New, but they are still anxious about the result. At 2 a.m., when my gut starts telling me, I can’t get it off my mind. “I just pray about it.”
The 2016 Vice President’s Correspondence to the Speaker: Trump, Pelosi, and a Woman Who Changed His Way of Acting
Trump said that no one had raised their hands, and then added that a woman had raised her hand. He joked — sharing shouted comments from rally-goers — that it could have been Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, or “a woman who transitioned.”
He recounted asking a previous rally crowd about the remark: “Is there any woman that would be offended by the fact that I said ‘I am going to protect you as your president’?”
I do things that are very controversial. I do not care. I do the right thing,” Trump said. I want to protect women, I want to protect men, and I want to protect children. I want to protect everyone.
At his rally in Gastonia, Trump again called for the death penalty for anyone who kills a citizen or law enforcement officer.
In a Saturday post on his platform Truth Social, Trump said that his opponent “is slumping to the finish line, yawning, shrieking, and cackling” calling Harris “a Low IQ individual.”
The campaign hopes to reach people who might not have made up their mind about the candidates. “We still know there’s some left, and we want to make sure we are the last people that voters are hearing from before they go vote,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign chair, told reporters.
The Harris campaign will air a two minute ad during the Green Bay Packers vs Detroit Lions game on Sunday that highlights the idea of serving as a president for all Americans.
“At the top of my list is bringing down the cost of living for you,” Harris said at her Charlotte rally. “That will be my focus every day as president.”
The Vice President Harris will focus on the things she hopes to change in her final days on the trail, according to her campaign officials.
Source: Trump and Harris make last-minute stops in North Carolina
The Trump and Harris Campaigns have a FEMA-Selected Electoral Campaign in the State of Mecklenburg, North Carolina
According to an NPR analysis, Trump won over half of the vote in the counties designated by FEMA as being in a category for aid due to a disaster. In disaster-affected counties, Trump won most of them if the heavily Democratic Mecklenburg County is excluded.
Both the Trump and Harris campaigns have spent a lot of money in the state, and both are holding multiple events on Saturday.
After a Saturday afternoon rally in Atlanta, Harris traveled to Charlotte for an event alongside North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Khalid.
In 1976, the last time a Democratic presidential candidate did so, it was Barack Obama. Despite a lot of attention from his reelection campaign, Obama narrowly lost the state in 2012.
The state went for Trump by a percentage point in 2016 and a percentage point in 2020 but changes to the makeup of the population could increase Harris’ chances.
There has been rapid growth in the so-called Research Triangle in the last 20 years, home to North Carolina State University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, leading to an increase in the state’s population of college-educated voters – who are more likely to be Harris supporters.
The Republicans have an advantage with white voters with college degrees and are also trying to reach conservative communities in the areas that were damaged by Hurricane Helene.