The Harris campaign hopes North Carolina will finally deliver
Democrats reliably win statewide in local races, but fail in presidential votes. Will this time be different?
民主党在地方选举中总是能赢得州一级的胜利，但在总统选举中却不太行。这次会有变化吗？
2024年9月05日 09:06 上午 |约翰斯顿县
DAVID JOHNSON fears his neighbour is a socialist. As a retiree he volunteers with his local Republican Party in Johnston County, a patch of North Carolina where pristine suburban streets yield to rambling country roads. The neighbour in question has put up a Black Lives Matter sign and Mr Johnson says she has accused him of being a white supremacist, which he denies. “She’s from Delaware,” he says. “Make of that what you will.”
大卫·约翰逊担心他的邻居是个社会主义者。作为退休人员，他在北卡罗来纳州约翰斯顿县的当地共和党当志愿者，那儿的郊区街道很干净，转眼就变成了蜿蜒的乡村路。他提到的那个邻居挂了一块“黑人的命也是命”的标语，约翰逊说她还指责他是白人至上主义者，但他坚决否认。“她来自特拉华州，”他说。“你可以自己想象一下。”
North Carolina will start distributing absentee ballots on September 6th, and as early voting begins, Johnston County is an unlikely battleground. Republican candidates for president have won the last 11 contests here, often handily. Yet Democrats increasingly see this part of the state as contested territory. Population growth in exurban counties and the state’s peculiar political demography mean that Democrats cannot afford to overlook small towns and the countryside, while Republicans can no longer take them for granted.
北卡罗来纳州将于9月6日开始发放缺席选票，提前投票也要开始了，而约翰斯顿县成了一个不太可能的战场。在这里，共和党候选人已经连续赢得了11场总统竞选，而且通常都是轻松获胜。不过，民主党人越来越把这个地方视为争夺地。郊区的人口在增长，加上该州独特的政治情况，让民主党不能忽视小城镇和乡村，而共和党也不能再理所当然地认为这些地区是自己的。
North Carolina only recently joined the list of swing states rated by nonpartisan analysts as toss-ups in November’s presidential vote. (The others are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada). Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and Kamala Harris’s ascension put the state in play. Where Mr Biden once trailed Donald Trump by seven points, Ms Harris now appears to be roughly tied.
北卡罗来纳州最近才被无党派分析人士列为今年11月总统大选的“摇摆州”，其他的有宾夕法尼亚、密歇根、威斯康星、乔治亚、亚利桑那和内华达。拜登决定退选，哈里斯上位让这个州变得更加关键。之前拜登落后特朗普7个百分点，而现在哈里斯看起来跟特朗普差不多平起平坐。
Yet North Carolina—an enticing prize with 16 electoral votes—has repeatedly teased and disappointed Democrats. The party’s nominees have lost the state in ten of the past 11 presidential elections. But North Carolina reliably elects Democrats to statewide offices. The party has controlled the governor’s mansion for 28 of the past 32 years, for example, and in 2020, Governor Roy Cooper attracted 150,000 more votes than Mr Biden. Mr Cooper’s local roots and tailored brand of moderate politics probably explain that vote gap.
不过，北卡罗来纳州这个有16张选举人票的诱人奖品，却一次又一次让民主党失望。在过去11届总统选举中，民主党的候选人有10次在这里输掉了比赛。但在州级选举中，这里却一直支持民主党。比如，在过去32年里，民主党控制了28年的州长职位，而2020年，州长罗伊·库珀比拜登多赢得了15万张票。库珀的本地背景和他那种温和的政治风格可能就是造成这种投票差距的原因。
His success and that of other state Democrats feeds the party’s optimism despite the dismal record in presidential races. Demographic currents do seem to strongly favour the party’s multi-racial and college-educated coalition. In 1990 North Carolina was 75% white. Three decades later the figure is 60%. It is one of the most educated states in the south, and of the small number of swing states this year it has the highest share of college- educated residents. Still, “If demography is destiny, that destiny is arriving at a much slower pace than many people had hoped,” says Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University.
他和其他州的民主党人的成功让这个党在总统选举表现不佳的情况下仍然充满了希望。人口趋势确实对他们多元化、受过高等教育的联盟很有利。1990年，北卡罗来纳州75%的人口是白人，而30年后，这个比例降到了60%。这里也是南部最受教育的州之一，而且在今年少数几个摇摆州中，受过大学教育的人占比最高。不过，“如果说人口决定命运，那这个命运到来的速度可真比很多人想象得慢得多，”杜克大学公共政策教授阿什尔·希尔德布兰德表示。
One reason is the state’s “multi-directional” political evolution, as Mr Hildebrand describes it. Contrast North Carolina with its southern neighbour Georgia, which unexpectedly veered left in 2020. African- American voters buoy the Democratic coalition in the South, and nearly a third of Georgians are black. This compares with only a fifth of North Carolinians. And while nearly three-quarters of Georgia’s population growth since 1990 has been in Atlanta, only 40% of North Carolina’s has occurred in Charlotte, the state’s largest city. The people moving to North Carolina are not just young, diverse urbanites, but also Republican-leaning retirees and military veterans. The electorate’s expansion, Mr Hildebrand sums up, “is all over the place, and that has the effect of muting the overall trend left”.
一个原因是，正如希尔德布兰德所说，这个州的政治发展很“多元化”。拿北卡罗来纳州和它南边的邻居乔治亚州比，后者在2020年意外地向左转。非裔美国人在南部为民主党联盟提供了支持，而乔治亚州近三分之一的人口是黑人，但北卡罗来纳州只有五分之一。而且，自1990年以来，乔治亚州人口增长中有近四分之三发生在亚特兰大，而北卡罗来纳州最大的城市夏洛特只占40%。迁到北卡的人不仅仅是年轻、多元化的城市居民，还有一些倾向于共和党的退休人员和军人。希尔德布兰德总结道，选民群体的扩大“遍布各地，这让整体向左发展的趋势减弱了”。
Some of the fastest-growing counties are in exurban areas. They help Republicans answer Democrats’ advantages in the cities and increasingly the suburbs. In JoCo, as locals call Johnston County, Republican presidential candidates easily carry the jurisdiction. But population growth has made JoCo relevant to both parties. For Democrats, holding down their opponent’s net margin in an expanding Republican stronghold is worth just as much as running up the score with their own base.
一些增长最快的县在郊区。这些地方帮助共和党人应对民主党人在城市和越来越多的郊区所占据的优势。在当地人称为乔科县（约翰斯顿县）这里，共和党的总统候选人轻松赢得了这个地区。但随着人口增长，乔科县变得对两党都很重要。对于民主党来说，在不断扩大的共和党地盘上限制对手的优势，跟在自己支持者中扩大票数一样重要。
Sharon Castleberry, the Democratic Party chair of Johnston County, is the local architect of this approach. A fifth-generation Johnstonian, she grew up helping out on her family’s tobacco farm. These days she pores over voter- registration data. She thinks Democrats are holding their own since Mr Biden yielded to Ms Harris. In the month after that pivot point, “we were pretty even with Republicans in terms of new registrations,” she notes.
约翰斯顿县的民主党主席莎伦·卡斯卡比是这个策略的主要推动者。她是第五代约翰斯顿人，从小就在家里的烟草农场帮忙。现在，她专注于研究选民登记的数据。她觉得，自从拜登把位置让给哈里斯后，民主党的表现还不错。在那个转折点后的一个月里，“我们在新注册选民方面和共和党基本持平，”她说。
If Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing, it is that Democrats cannot win North Carolina in urban and suburban areas alone. Rather, “you have to go west of 77 and east of 95 to win,” says Matt Mercer of the North Carolina Republican Party, referring to two highways that bookend Charlotte and Raleigh, the prosperous cities in the state’s centre.
如果共和党和民主党有一个共识，那就是民主党不能仅靠城市和郊区的选票赢得北卡罗来纳州。北卡罗来纳州的共和党人马特·默瑟说：“要想赢，你得往西走到77号公路，或者往东走到95号公路。”这两条公路分别把夏洛特和罗利这两个繁荣的城市隔开。
Under Anderson Clayton, a rural North Carolinian, the state’s Democratic Party has organised in areas beyond cities and suburbs. About half of the Harris campaign’s field offices are in exurban and rural regions. “They’re welcome to go into all of North Carolina,” says Mr Mercer, “which they seem to have an aversion to.” He is adamant that all this effort by his opponents will merely lead to more Democratic disillusionment come November.
在安德森·克雷顿的带领下，北卡罗来纳州的民主党开始在城市和郊区之外进行组织。哈里斯竞选团队大约一半的办公室都设在郊区和农村地区。“他们可以去北卡罗来纳州的任何地方，”默瑟说，“但看起来他们对此不太感兴趣。”他坚信，对手们这些努力只会让更多民主党人在11月的大选中感到失望。
