North Carolina, Democrats' elusive battleground
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2024
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2020, North Carolina was the one that got away for Democrats: Then candidate Joe Biden lost the state by the smallest margin in the presidential election. Now, with the election a little over a month away, Democrats and Republicans are kicking into overdrive, campaigning to win North Carolina, a newly competitive swing state.
Elahe Izadi speaks with political reporter Hannah Knowles about why Democrats now think they can win North Carolina and how the state could tip the balance of the election in November.
Today’s show was produced by Laura Benshoff, with help from Ariel Plotnick. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to Sean Sullivan.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So how many doors do you guys usually hit in like one shift? Well now they went up |
| 0:10.6 | I probably I probably slowed you down. |
| 0:13.0 | Post political reporter Hannah Knowles has been spending a lot of time in North Carolina. |
| 0:18.0 | It's a state swarming with organizers supporting both Democrats and Republicans. |
| 0:24.0 | I went out door knocking with some organizers with a labor union |
| 0:29.0 | and we were out in Charlotte, which is this, you know, one of the kind of blue bastions in North Carolina. |
| 0:36.0 | And so we were in kind of a quiet neighborhood, like a cul-de-sac, |
| 0:40.0 | and you had Democratic organizers literally like running into each other. |
| 0:45.2 | Yeah, yeah, great to meet you. |
| 0:48.2 | It's good to take all of us, you know what I mean? |
| 0:50.4 | Well, we're going to make history. |
| 0:51.6 | We're going to turn North Carolina We'll turn North Carolina Blue. |
| 0:53.5 | I hope so, because we need it. |
| 0:55.0 | I was in Georgia. |
| 0:56.0 | And also as we were going around, we could see that Republicans had already left mailers |
| 1:01.0 | in some of these mailboxes. So it was clear that both sides are out on the |
| 1:05.5 | ground in full force. |
| 1:09.6 | For Hannah, North Carolina is the place to be because the presidential race there got a lot more |
| 1:14.8 | interesting this summer after President Joe Biden dropped out. |
| 1:19.4 | You know when Biden was running against Trump there was this sense that Trump still had the edge, but now that it's |
| 1:24.2 | Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, it really is a really tight neck and neck race. |
| 1:30.6 | Former President Donald Trump is counting on winning North Carolina. |
... |
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