It’s a big week for the presidential campaigns in North Carolina. Former Vice President Joe Biden will be in Charlotte on Wednesday. And hours after the Biden campaign announced his visit, Donald Trump’s campaign announced the president will make his own visit to Charlotte Thursday.
The Trump campaign has made its presence felt in North Carolina. This will be the president’s fifth visit in as many weeks. Biden has not been in North Carolina since before the state’s primary.
Polls show Trump and Biden in a statistical tie in North Carolina. Nationally, recent polls show Biden leads Trump by at least seven points, but what really matters are the Electoral College votes from about half a dozen so-called swing states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
North Carolina’s 15 Electoral College votes could make the difference for both candidates to reach 270, the number needed to secure the presidency for the next four years.
Almost 1 million voters in North Carolina have requested mail-in ballots, and about 150,000 of those have already been returned to county boards of election. North Carolina has more than 7.1 million registered voters.
The Trump campaign has made its presence felt in North Carolina early and often since mail-in voting began. The president was in Fayetteville Saturday. He’s also made visits to Wilmington, the Asheville area, and Charlotte over the past month.
One of the Trump campaign’s regular lines in North Carolina is to point out how Biden has not visited the state since before the primary. Wednesday’s visit will take away that talking point from the GOP.
North Carolina can expect more visits from Biden and Kamala Harris in the runup to the election on November 3, according to Austin Cook, spokesman for the North Carolina Democratic Party.
“We see this as a key battleground,” Cook said. Trump “can’t win this election without North Carolina,” he said.
Cook said Trump’s visits to North Carolina could be helping Democratic candidates in the state, pointing to the party’s success in 2018, especially with suburban voters.
“It’s the suburbs in North Carolina that will be the deciding areas,” he said in an interview with Spectrum News 1. “Those are the real battlegrounds in our state.”
Cook said he thinks suburban voters are turned off by Trump’s tactics. “It puts us in a strong position when he tries to scare people,” he said, whether that’s about the coronavirus or protests over race relations.
Sarah Newby, with the North Carolina GOP, said based on her experience at Trump campaign stops in the state, “The enthusiasm for re-electing the president is there.”
She said each time the president stops in the state, he helps candidates running in down-ballot races too, including congressional seats and the state legislature.
The national campaign has helped support local candidates by bringing candidates to campaign events and talking about lesser known races like for judicial seats while campaigning for the president, Newby told Spectrum News 1.
“It’s really encouraging to see the Trump campaign want to support races down the ballot,” she said.
