John Davis Consulting

NC Elections a Positive Political Correction as Trump/GOP Seawall Minimizes Democratic Wave

November 9, 2018         Vol. XI, No. 18         1:13 pm

$17.5 Million Spent Against Holding, Harris and Budd

I had to eat a bit of crow for breakfast on Wednesday morning, after a year-long forecast that “Republicans will hold their majorities in Washington DC and Raleigh on November 6, 2018.” The GOP did hold the US Senate and the North Carolina General Assembly but lost the US House.

My reasoning all year was that the Democratic “blue wave” was being weakened by vengefulness over the loss of the White House to Donald Trump, and that a bitter wave would not likely breach the Trump/GOP seawall of gerrymandered districts and conservative accomplishments during an era of historic economic expansion.

That reasoning certainly held here in North Carolina, where all 10 Republican-held U.S. House districts were won by Republicans despite a “green wave” of Democratic money. The state’s three most vulnerable Republican US House seats saw $17.5 million spent by Democrats, all to no avail.

• GOP Congressman George Holding (Wake) won despite $3 million spent to defeat him ($1.9 million spent by outside sources; $1.1 million spent by opponent Linda Coleman)
• GOP candidate Mark Harris (Mecklenburg) won despite $9.1 million spent to defeat him ($4.2 million spent by outside sources; $4.9 million spent by opponent Dan McCready)
• GOP Congressman Ted Budd (Forsyth) won despite $5.4 million spent to defeat him ($1.8 million spent by outside sources; $3.6 million spent by opponent Kathy Manning)

However, throughout the United States historically GOP-friendly suburbs in metropolitan areas, including those around southern cities like Houston, Dallas and Atlanta, elected Democrats rather than Republicans to the United State House of Representatives. It was a political correction.

Amy Walter, National Editor of the Cook Political Report, in summarizing the US House results, said, “Democrats wanted this election … to be a total rebuke of Trump. A wipe out of epic proportions all across the country. That didn’t happen. What we saw instead was more of a retrenchment. Red areas stayed red; blue areas stayed blue. The only real movement was in [Republican-held] districts that were purple — districts that had voted for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or had narrowly supported Trump — tipped overwhelmingly to Democrats.”

As David Wasserman, Senior analyst of U.S. House races with the Cook Political Report, noted, “Democrats didn’t flip any district that Trump had carried by 55 percent or more.”

Bottom line: Republican-held swing seats, whether state legislative or congressional, in suburban America, are now almost all in the hands of Democrats. Upper income, highly-educated suburban white voters in large metropolitan areas are now, in the age of President Trump, predictably Democratic.

The newly realigned Democratic coalition as an Electoral College threat to the GOP in the 2020 race for the White House, however, is offset equally by the newly realigned Republican coalition.

White working-class districts that voted for Obama-then-Trump are now becoming predictably Republican. They are joining white red-state conservatives in the South and Midwest to form a solid, Electoral College coalition equal in potential to the Democratic Electoral College coalition of coastal blue states and large states with dominant urban/suburban progressives.

The same political realignment of the political parties is taking place here North Carolina. Republicans are getting wiped out in urban counties. After Tuesday’s elections, Wake County has only one Republican member of its 16-member delegation to the North Carolina General Assembly, Senator John Alexander. For emphasis: Wake County has zero “0” GOP-held seats in the North Carolina House.

In addition to losing almost all legislative seats in North Carolina’s largest urban counties, Republicans also lost seven GOP-held districts carried by Hillary Clinton. A combination of those two categories of losses cost Republicans their supermajorities in both the North Carolina Senate and House.

The North Carolina Senate went from a 35-15 Republican supermajority to a Republican majority of 29-21. The North Carolina House went from a 75-45 supermajority to a 66-54 Republican majority. And, although a loss of supermajorities is politically devastating for Republicans — they now have to reckon with Governor Cooper and his veto power — the fact is that North Carolina is a swing state, with about 40% Republican/Lean Republican and 40% Democratic/Lean Democratic.

That’s why I used the term “political correction” in the title of this report. Blue urban counties voted Democratic, including their once-GOP suburbs. Red rural and ex-urban counties voted Republican. We corrected ourselves politically into the perfectly balanced swing state that we are.

Tuesday was a win-win election for both Republicans and Democrats, nationally and in North Carolina. We are now a state and nation of divided power. A positive political correction.

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John N. Davis

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“Your presentation at the [September 7] 2018 NC CCIM State Conference in Asheville was captivating. As usual, you were able to bring perspective to the upcoming mid-year elections by providing everyone in the room something to think and talk about. Our membership spans a plethora of political viewpoints, and your presentation caters to everyone. Your ability to inform an audience without bias is striking and one of the reasons we continue to invite you back. Thank you for another great political overview for the commercial real estate industry.”

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