Why NC Stopped Trending Democratic

[100% pro-life no matter what]

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People who moved to NC in the last ten years are acting more like lifelong residents than people who moved there more than 10 years ago.  For some reason- and I'm not sure why- NC seems to be attracting a different type of migrant now than it used to attract.

http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls/north-carolina/president

[Figueira]

Beware of the low sample size, but interesting if true. Does anyone in NC have insight?

[/]

NC did trend Democratic though. Like... it did. Look at the trend map.

[Vosem]

Democrats underperformed relative to polling, but setting polling aside I think they did fine. The state recorded a trend to Democrats at the presidential level, and swings towards the Democrats at the senatorial and gubernatorial level; the Democrats managed a pickup at the gubernatorial level, in fact (and a hold of the Attorney General position, which is probably the second-most powerful after the Governor). Democrats won 4 statewide positions to the Republicans' 6; this was worse than 2012, when Democrats won 6 to 4 Republicans, but certainly not catastrophic. Democrats gained a seat in the state House while losing a seat in the state Senate.

So, I don't know what you're getting at. You could ask why polling was wrong -- which is an interesting question, because NC polling typically projected a very forceful Democratic trend that would see Hillary do better there than nationally, which obviously didn't come to pass. In comparison with that, any result would seem bad. But the Democrats didn't really do that poorly in NC.

[Roronoa D. Law]

It trended Democrat NC just moved with the nation. I'm not all that good with math but Obama won the popular vote by 7.27% in 2008 and Clinton won the popular vote by 2.10% so that is 5.17% swing to the Republicans. In NC Obama won with only .32% while Hillary lost NC with 3.7% so that is a 4.02% trend to the Republicans. NC swung Republican but so did the nation as a whole but the nation shifted 1.15% more Republican than the state of NC. So relative to the nation NC trended Democrat.   

[Figueira]

NC did trend Democratic though. Like... it did. Look at the trend map.

Still, Democrats really underperformed in the state, even with all the early voting.

Underperformed compared to polls? That just means the polls were bad. If the polls had shown Clinton losing NC by 8 points and the actual result still happened, would you have called that an impressive performance by Hillary?

[Smash255]

Swung Republican in 2012 and 2016, but swinging and trending are two different things.  In swung less than the national average so actually trended Democratic in both 2012 and 2016 (albeit narrowly in 2016)

[nclib]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

People who moved to NC in the last ten years are acting more like lifelong residents than people who moved there more than 10 years ago.  For some reason- and I'm not sure why- NC seems to be attracting a different type of migrant now than it used to attract.

http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls/north-carolina/president

Interesting...wonder if it's caused by our far-right legislature.

[Young Conservative]

Everyone saying that NC trended blue is fooling  themselves. Relative to 2012 it didn't trend blue. In 2012, NC voted for romney by 2.04 points as the nation voted blue by 3.9 points. In 2016, it voted for trump by 3.7 points as the nation voted for Clinton by 2.1 points. That's 5.8 points more Republican this Year and 5.86 points more Republican in 2012. We need to stop calling everything a trend because THAT is not a trend that's a statistical insignificance. North Carolina was stable despite Trump being a poor fit for the state in my opinion.