The surging enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia and North Carolina is convincing local Democratic leaders that she can score the first double win in the Southern swing states since Jimmy Carter.
More than 52,000 volunteers have joined the Harris campaign there since she announced her presidential bid — so many that county party heads barely know what to do with them. One official in the Greensboro, North Carolina, area described her headquarters as a “madhouse,” with up to 30 people showing up every day to help and a deep-pocketed donor shelling out to pay neighborhood canvassers.
Harris, a Californian, has opened up an electoral path in two traditionally Republican states in the South that no Democrat has won together since Georgia native Carter in 1976. In the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of registered voters in seven swing states, she’s now leading Donald Trump in both states by 2 percentage points.
That’s within the margin of error, meaning the two are essentially in a toss-up election. But it’s an improvement from her showing in July, when she lagged Trump by 2 points in North Carolina and was even with him in Georgia — and it’s much better than President Joe Biden’s numbers before he exited the race.
Harris, 59, is pulling in people like Kameryn Taylor, 25, who said she was struggling to rouse up the energy to turn out for the 81-year-old Biden. Now she’s all in.
“I’m pretty pro-Kamala,” Taylor said in a recent interview in Greensboro. “I like that she is a fresh face, and I like that’s she’s willing to take on women’s rights when it comes to abortion.”
Potential voters in both states praised the Democratic candidate’s relative youth and vigor, her identity as the first Black and Asian woman to lead a major-party ticket and her commitment to reproductive rights. In the August poll, Harris posted double-digit gains in support among women, those aged 18-34 and seniors 65 and older in North Carolina and smaller but notable increases among such groups in Georgia compared to Biden. Her share of Black voters in each state exceeded Biden’s as well.
Barely considered a swing state, North Carolina was moved to a “toss up” last week by the Cook Political Report. Neighboring Georgia became a toss up recently, potentially relieving some of the pressure for Harris to win the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“This race turned on a dime,” said Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in North Carolina. “It’s a whole new dynamic.”
To be sure, the GOP remains powerful in North Carolina and Georgia, and Trump still draws adoring crowds. North Carolinians last elected a Democrat president in 2008, while Biden’s squeaker of a win in Georgia in 2020 was the first Democratic victory there since Bill Clinton’s first term.
Trump’s campaign has cast Harris’ surge as a sugar high that is leveling off. “We believe, internally, based on the data, that the plateau’s been reached,” Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes said.
But Harris has been able to pull some of the voters who dislike both Trump and Biden, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University and author of the forthcoming Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer.
In Georgia, the Harris camp said it has the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle, with more than 190 staff members in 24 offices. In Fayetteville, a bustling Atlanta suburb, Democratic Party Chair Joe Clark said he’s never seen so much investment from headquarters, with new 65-inch television monitors installed in some offices and full-time security.
On Friday, the cramped Fayetteville office was cluttered with Harris yard signs and a jumbo dry erase calendar full of Young Democrat socials and Saturday canvassing events. A local congressional candidate, Maura Keller, popped in and said that since Harris became the nominee, far more people are paying attention to her race against Trump-endorsed Republican Brian Jack and taking her campaign signs. And at the monthly Pancakes & Politics breakfast, which used to get a decent crowd, lately “it’s standing room only,” said county membership chair Bertha Regans.
Over in Greensboro, Guilford County Democratic Party Chair Kathy Kirkpatrick is fielding scores of volunteers energized from the Democratic National Convention in August, particularly after former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech exhorting people to “do something.”
The office the day after “was a madhouse,” Kirkpatrick said. “They’re all there to do something, which was fun.”
Harris’s pick of Minnesota Tim Governor Tim Walz as her running mate has also cheered some North Carolinians.
“Kamala and Tim really support people to be who they are, and there’s this absence of division and absence of hate,” said Sarah McDavid, 53, owner of a metaphysical shop in downtown Greensboro. “They really are bringing in a little more happiness to politics.”
Just up the sidewalk, though, Clayton Sturdivant, 52, said he remained undecided. The United Parcel Service driver is deeply religious and some of the Democratic Party’s positions, such as support for abortion rights, bother him. But the Republican Party seems to ignore Black people altogether, he said.
Said Sturdivant, “We should trust in God.”
In August, seemingly the bulk of Asheboro, North Carolina – population 28,000 – turned out for a Trump rally at a tiny airport and aviation museum amid pastures and forests. Vendors sold full-size cardboard cut-outs of the former president, and fans proudly wore ball caps reading, “I’m voting for the felon.”
Trump during his speech blasted Biden and Harris for elevated inflation and illegal immigration, themes he’s hit on for months. But the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll showed that Harris is faring better than Biden when it comes to pocketbook issues. When voters were asked who they trust more on the economy, Harris trailed Trump by just single digits in Georgia and North Carolina, while Biden had lagged by over 10 percentage points in each state before he exited the race.
In Leland, a boomtown off the North Carolina coast, Barry Meyer has grown more comfortable with Harris in the past month after initially having his doubts.
“I’m very confident that she could do a great job, because I like the enthusiasm,” Meyer, 71, said. “Because with Biden, Democrats were like, ‘God, is that the best we can come up with?’”
