The national and North Carolina political landscapes have been changing rapidly over the past decade. While much attention has been paid to persuading white moderate “swing” voters who voted for Trump in 2016 to come back to the Democratic party in 2020, less attention has been given to North Carolina’s other swing voters: the registered voters in the Democratic base who are still deciding whether to vote – or vote down ballot – in 2020. With less than 70 days to go until election day, here are 10 critical reasons why a strong focus on appealing to left-leaning voters is key to flipping North Carolina blue in 2020.
Why isn't FLIP NC registering voters?
Some folks have asked why we're not doing voter registration. Here's why:
As a volunteer-run organization led by a small group of folks with full-time day jobs, we started FLIP NC knowing that we have limited time, and we wanted to focus on doing one thing well. That one thing? Getting out the vote among left-leaning, registered voters in flippable legislative districts.
In North Carolina, turnout among registered voters has topped out at just under 70%. That leaves nearly a third of already-registered voters who aren’t getting to the polls even when turnout is at an historic high.
And the pool of registered voters who don’t vote is far more left-leaning than the pool of registered voters that consistently gets to the polls. That means we have a huge opportunity to win big just by getting registered, left-leaning voters to the polls in 2020.
Race to the Bottom: We Can’t Rely on the Top of the Ticket When It Comes to Down-Ballot Voting
When Democrats turn out – and vote the full ticket – we win. Our problem? Republicans are better at both. It’s why the GOP was able to take over our state legislature in 2010 and how we got the resulting gerrymandered maps that put us where we are today.
To restore the democratic institutions of our state and our country, we’re going to need to compete up and down the ballot. And the critical state legislative races we need to win in 2020 will be far down the ballot. Now is our opportunity to talk with left-leaning voters about why these races are so important – and what is at stake in 2020 – before top-of-the-ticket campaigns steal the show.
Importantly, we can’t rely on up-ballot candidates to win these races for us. Turnout for down-ballot races can help drive up-ballot voting, but it doesn’t always work in reverse.
D.C. is a sh*tshow. Why is FLIP NC focused on the state legislature?
FLIP NC was founded in January 2017, the week Trump was inaugurated, when a group of friends got together at a bar to drown our sorrows – and to figure out wtf we were going to do about it.
We’d attended our share of Moral Mondays, protesting the regressive, anti-democratic policies of our illegitimate, GOP-controlled state legislature over the past several years, but it took Trump’s ascension to the White House for us to do more than chant and wave signs.
So if Trump is what finally drove us to take action, why does the state legislature remain FLIP NC’s primary focus?