The death toll from Hurricane Helen continues to rise by the day, with hundreds of people still missing as recovery efforts continue. Major disasters have been declared in parts of seven states, with damaged roads hampering relief efforts. Given the scale of Helen’s destruction, even the most avid political observers are showing some reluctance to speak immediately about the storm’s potential electoral impact.
But North Carolina, the state hardest hit by the hurricane, will be a key state in determining which candidate takes the White House in January. Donald Trump won the state in 2020 by a margin of 74,483 votes (1.3% of the 5.5 million votes cast), so even small changes in the electoral landscape are notable.
There is nothing minor about Hurricane Helen. Days after the storm, hundreds of thousands of people in North Carolina were without power. Many residents lost their homes and jobs permanently. Some sections of major roads, including at least one stretch of interstate, remain closed and could be out of service for a year.
“I want all of us, political analysts, journalists/reporters, campaigns and their operatives, and the general public outside of the 25 FEMA-designated counties to remember that they are our fellow North Carolinians who have been affected. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask them to do something like this.” Such an approach would prevent them from fully understanding the magnitude of what they would be facing for months, if not years. , few people recognize,” Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, wrote Wednesday. . The request was submitted before Bitzer conducted a demographic and electoral analysis of affected western North Carolina counties for his Old North politics blog.
Politics may not be top of mind right now, but North Carolina’s general election has already begun. Officials have mailed more than 200,000 absentee ballots across the state, including 39,728 to voters in the 25 western counties covered by the federal major disaster declaration for Helen through Wednesday. is included. Of those, only 1,499 ballots were returned. Voters must register by Oct. 11 to participate in the general election, and early voting begins Oct. 17.
Despite the turmoil, election season moves forward.
Election management challenges.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections continues to assess Helen’s damage. “This storm is like nothing we have ever seen in Western North Carolina. This destruction is unprecedented and this level of uncertainty this close to Election Day. is mind-boggling,” State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said at a media briefing Tuesday. “We are tackling this situation one step at a time, and this will be a continuous process from now until Election Day.”
In western North Carolina, five county election offices remained closed as of Thursday. Municipalities that have reopened were considering the accessibility of polling places both for early voting and on Election Day.
This year marks the first time North Carolina’s photo voter identification law will go into effect in a general election. Officials are preparing to deal with voters who have lost their ID or are unable to obtain a valid ID in time to get to the polls.
Even before the Helen incident, the State Board of Elections had been the subject of lawsuits over various aspects of election administration. Under state law, the governor’s party has a 3-2 majority on the Board of Elections. The current Democratic majority already faces four lawsuits from the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party. The Electoral Commission could foresee further legal action if Republican groups deem its emergency actions to favor one party over the other.
presidential politics.
On Tuesday, President Trump himself injected a political element into North Carolina’s Helen recovery efforts. The former president and current Republican candidate explained in a social media post that he plans to deliver supplies to the state once his presence does not interfere with local emergency management efforts.
“I’m almost there and I don’t like the reports about the federal government and Democratic governors not bothering to help people in Republican areas. MAGA!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“I told him he was lying and the governor was lying,” President Joe Biden told reporters later in the day when asked about Trump’s comments.
The federal major disaster declaration issued on September 28 covered Cherokee lands in 25 counties in western North Carolina and three additional counties along the Tennessee-Georgia border. Trump won 26 of those 28 counties in his 2020 reelection bid, beating Biden in the region by 604,119 to 356,902 votes. That equates to about 250,000 votes in states that were decided by fewer than 75,000 votes in 2020.
Even excluding Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, and Lincoln counties, Republican strongholds in the populous Charlotte area on the eastern edge of the disaster declaration area, Trump beat Biden by 40 in the other 24 counties in 2020. The winner was 4,359 votes to 260,025. The margin of victory was 144,334 votes, still nearly double Trump’s statewide victory total.
Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College, looked at available data to learn more about the 1.3 million registered voters in the 25 counties declared a disaster.
“When we talk about the political dynamics of Helen-influenced counties in North Carolina, we are describing a more Republican, more rural, older, and white voter population, and ultimately represents approximately 17 percent of both registered and actual voters cast in the 2020 election,” Bitzer wrote in a post Wednesday.
Although Helen primarily affected “red” counties, the storm’s impact could pose challenges for supporters of both major political parties. Asheville’s Buncombe County voted for Biden in 2020 by a wide margin of 96,515 to 62,412.
Impact on voter participation.
Groups focused on turnout are adjusting their plans.
“While voting in the next election may not be a top priority for those affected, our organization is committed to ensuring that those affected and displaced by Helen have access to their ballots and that this We are working to maintain voting eligibility in the fall,” the center-left activist group Democracy North Carolina said in a news release Wednesday.
Dallas Woodhouse is the former state executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party and current state director of American Majority Action. Long before the storm, the group was working to assure voters that North Carolina’s 2024 elections would be fair and secure. The group also pushed for early voting options.
“As our neighbors, friends, and families in Western North Carolina face horrific losses of life, property, income, and safety, it is important that these residents do not lose their voice in the political process,” Wood said. House told the Dispatch. . “We at American Majority Action are already having conversations with people across the political spectrum about how to guarantee voting rights for residents in flood-affected areas. I don’t know exactly what it will be, but it will be a monumental effort.”
“We don’t know, and we don’t care, which side will or won’t benefit from a change in the electorate,” Woodhouse added. “We are all citizens, neighbors, and friends. This goes beyond partisan politics. “It would be a shameful irony if it played no role in this,” he said.
Bitzer said local election boards will “need to respond to potential changes to voting locations on Nov. 5, as well as the potential need for a complete overhaul of early voting management.” Watch told the Dispatch in an email. Much will also depend on North Carolina’s Republican-led General Assembly, “as well as consideration of potential funding and more ‘convenience to vote’ approaches that may be needed.” Bitzer added.
He also plans to watch as the state releases local voting numbers in the coming weeks. “We suspect that many affected citizens are not motivated to vote at this time, so they may want to wait until Nov. 5, when the situation is calmer, to focus on voting,” Bitzer said. said.
Chris Cooper, a political science and public affairs professor at Western Carolina University and author of Anatomy of a Purple State, typically spends late September to early October on social media for polling data and election trends. was spent analyzing.
Earlier this year, Cooper posted photos and videos of surging floodwaters and depleted grocery store shelves. He gave his followers an update on road conditions near his home in downtown Sylva, North Carolina. The internet at his home had been restored hours before the Dispatch reached out to him with questions about Helen’s political influence.
“It’s going to be very location dependent,” Cooper said in an email. “Parts of the mountain are completely devastated, houses are gone, streets have disappeared, the mountain surface has been scraped away. In other places there has been some inconvenience and communication disruption, but other than that… No problem. And these places could be just a few miles from each other.”
“So for some families, their interest in elections and voter turnout may remain the same, but for others it may fade deep into the background,” he added.
“The real impact on elections will be in election administration,” Cooper said. “For example, what happens if a county has five poll workers at an early voting site and two of them have to leave the area? If the polling place floods? What’s going to happen? Elections are run by people, and many of those people have just experienced a major disruption to their lives.”
