North Carolina may no longer be a swing state: With under a week to go until Election Day, the Kamala Harris campaign just slashed its planned advertising in the state. Some see the move as a surrender in the face of surging Republican turnout and plunging Democratic turnout in early voting there.  

According to AdImpact, a political intelligence firm, on Monday the Harris-Walz campaign reserved $2.7 million worth of ads in North Carolina for the last stretch of the campaign, only to turn around and kill more than $2 million of its reservations on Tuesday. Though Harris is following through on a scheduled Raleigh rally on Wednesday morning — while Trump is holding his own event in Rocky Mount, NC — her campaign managers’ hopes of winning North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes have likely plunged as daily updates of early voting numbers continue to paint a grim picture of her prospects in the Tar Heel State.

Donald Trump at a September rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (Haiyun Jiang via New York Times)

The 2020 vs 2024 contrast in early voting patterns is striking. Compared to the same time four years ago, North Carolina Democrats have cast 341,000 fewer votes, while Republicans have cast 9,000 more, noted Andy Jackson of the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation. Aside from the party mix, North Carolina is also seeing lower turnout among two traditional Democratic voter blocs: young people and blacks. In 2020, 92% of the state’s black voters backed Biden. Across the country, however, black support of Trump is surging.   

Earlier this month, political analyst Mark Halperin told Tucker Carlson that, despite Harris’ bullishness on North Carolina, reliable Republicans told him North Carolina was firmly on the Trump side of the scoresheet: 

NORTH CAROLINA:

“A lot of [Harris’s] aides have been very bullish on North Carolina as the linchpin for replacing Pennsylvania if they lose Pennsylvania.”

Halperin says he has very trustworthy sources that know exactly how North Carolina will swing. Here’s what they are telling… pic.twitter.com/XL1oeSH3LX

— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) October 17, 2024

Last week, an unnamed Harris campaign official conceded that things were starting to look bleak in North Carolina, telling NBC News, “Of all of the seven [swing states], that one seems to be a little bit slipping away.” The campaign had seen a North Carolina-Nevada combo as a potential game-saving offset in the event Trump were to win Pennsylvania. Now, North Carolina seems to fading out of reach, while early voting turnout patterns in Nevada also have Democrats sweating.  

In this scenario, if Trump wins North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, he’d only need 8 more electoral votes from the four remaining swing states to reach the winning 270: 

While early voting numbers paint a grim Democratic picture, opinion polls continue to portray the North Carolina race as a tight one. The most recent poll, via AtlasIntel, has Harris leading 49% to 48%. Trafalgar’s latest survey shows Trump leading 49% to 46%. In 2020, Trump won North Carolina, beating Joe Biden 49.9% to 48.6%.  

Going into early voting, there was considerable concern among Republicans that turnout in GOP-dominated western North Carolina would be smothered by the devastation visited upon the region by Hurricane Helene — so much so that the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, mused that North Carolina’s legislature should consider awarding the state’s electoral votes to Trump no matter what the election’s outcome is. 

However, in another Democrat-jarring early-voting dynamic, “Turnout in the 13 counties hardest hit by Helene is slightly HIGHER than in the rest of the state,” said election expert Jackson. According to a new Elon University poll, only 24% of North Carolina Republicans say that state and federal agencies are doing a “very good” or “good” job handling recovery efforts, compared to 68% of Democrats — who are less likely to live in the affected zone.  

As an increasingly weakened Harris campaign staggers to the finish line, what will be the next shoe to drop?