Thom Tillis Is Extremely Vulnerable
The State of the State
According to Morning Consult the President sits 3 points underwater in North Carolina after winning the state by 3.67%. This places North Carolina approval above Ohio and below Florida. In 2018 Republicans garnered 50.39% of the vote and Democrats received 48.35%. This represented a roughly 4 point delta in favor of Democrats from the prior election. On these metrics alone, North Carolina is a state that, at the very least, leans right.
While 2018 saw extremely high enthusiasm from Democrats, one trend sticks out in North Carolina. Dan McCready’s races offer a critical snapshot for the future of the state. He lost the historically conservative 9th district (R+8) by under 1000 votes in his first race. The result was thrown out due to scandal, setting up a do-over. His opponent, Mark Harris, did not run again and McCready went on to lose to Bishop by about 2 points. On the face of it, this shows a resurgence in GOP enthusiasm in the 9th district. However, this result is complicated by the fact that McCready received fewer votes in rural blue counties and outperformed his first over-performance in the growing Charlotte suburban Mecklenburg county. In the second race he received 56% of the Mecklenburg vote. These two results taken together succinctly show the further shift in the urban-rural divide, especially as they speak to North Carolina.
The Numbers
So far we only have a few head to head poll on the race. In June Tillis lost to Smith by 7 points according to Emerson. This month another poll by PPP (D) had Tillis losing to another potential nominee Cal Cunningham by a slim 2 points. According to the same poll Tillis is negative with 33 to 51 approval to disapproval. Morning Consult does not have him fairing much better with an identical approval but only a 35% disapproval. A massive 32% polled did not know who Thom Tillis was. Having an extremely low name recognition can be almost as bad as having high recognition and low favorables. An analogous case in the Democratic party is Gary Peters, a senator I plan to analyze soon. North Carolina also has a huge and highly prestigious college network. College student voting doubled in 2018. There is no obvious reason to think 2020 turnout won’t be even higher than 2018.
Don’t Trust Polls?
Thom Tillis won his race in 2014 by 2 points at a time when Republicans were continuing to make strong gains. He defeated one-term Democrat Kay Hagan. He won this race after emerging from a challenging primary where he was one of the rare establishment wins over the Tea Party. His brand has always been that of a pro-business and fairly moderate Conservative. This hasn’t been an easy lift in our increasingly polarized nation. Nowhere has this been more on display than his bungled handling of the President’s national emergency. First, he wrote a Washington Post op-ed decrying the declaration. Then, in a turnabout he cast his vote in favor at the last minute. On impeachment, he has come out with a fiery defense of the President. The other senator in North Carolina, Richard Burr, has taken a far more measured tone on the matter.
Tillis has good reason to flip back and forth. While he will certainly be attacked from the left, he also has a very dangerous primary challenger on his right. Tucker, a more conservative businessman than Tillis, has raised and self-loaned nearly $1M for his campaign. Tillis has nearly four times that. However, with 35 percent of North Carolina residents self-defining as Evangelical, it is forceable that the more socially conservative candidate could break out of the primary.
Conclusion
It is certainly no sure thing that Tillis will even be the nominee come November. However, if he is, there will be no shortage of sound-bytes of him saying extremely Conservative talking points in order to defend his right. North Carolina recently elected Roy Cooper in an narrow race where the Bathroom Bill stood as the elephant in the room. In a general election the state is apt to be highly sensitive to any harbingers of similar policy.
As a state, North Carolina is shifting demographically. Rapid urbanization in Charlotte and the research triangle have been buttressed by a movement away from the Republican Party by women and suburbanites. Since 2016 we have seen that this movement on class lines extending throughout the country. In the South, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas saw definitive shifts as a result of these trends in 2016 and 2018. With his base slipping away, an expensive primary, low name recognition and exposure on his left and his right, there is no reason to rate Tillis above Toss-up.
