CHARLOTTE, N.C. – This week, three of the four most important people on the Democratic and Republican national tickets are making stops in the Tar Heel State.
Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, will talk in Asheville on Tuesday as he runs for vice president. As Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance will be in Raleigh on Wednesday. On Saturday, Trump will talk to people in Wilmington.
Even though Trump has a habit of going after rivals, he blames Biden and Harris’s words for what they said about him.
With the meetings this week, we will have had eight from presidential and vice presidential candidates so far this month. North Carolina has 16 electoral college votes, and both parties are making it clear that they want those votes.
Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said, “They’re giving the most valuable thing they have—their time—to the Old North State.”
There are less than 50 days left until the election, and the top candidates in the country are trying to reach independent and unsure voters in this swing state.
He said, “For Donald Trump, it is hard, if not impossible, for him to get to the White House without North Carolina.” “It’s very important for both candidates.” This is even more true for Trump.
The State Board of Elections’ most recent report says that there are more than 2.8 million voters who are not registered with any party. That’s close to 37% of all eligible voters in North Carolina.
“Your vote is your voice,” said Joselle Torres with Democracy NC. “Unaffiliated voters have the most voice in this election because they make up the largest block of voters in North Carolina.”
These are the reasons why nonpartisan groups like Democracy NC are getting people, especially younger people, who wouldn’t usually go to the polls to vote.
“Of the four million Gen Z voters registered in the U.S., over a million will be voting for the first time ever in the 2024 general election, and thousands of them are not affiliated with any party,” Torres said. “We want to teach them.”
Everyone running is using the same plan. It was only last week that Vice President Kamala Harris was in Charlotte and Greensboro. At the end of this week, Trump will go to the coast. A lot of the people who go to the rallies are already voters who know who they want to support, but the impact goes much further than that.
“The rallies and the people who come are important,” Cooper said. “But the most important thing is that those events are made bigger, right?” That is, the news coverage that comes before and after. People who don’t vote but might be interested in knowing if the candidate cares about their neighborhood, right? In fact, they might talk to someone who went to that meeting.
Political experts said that problems like the economy, immigration, and health care could get some people who aren’t registered to vote to go out and vote. Most of the time, though, these voters care less about policy answers and more about how the candidates present themselves and each other.