The 2024 election is 60 days away, but voting will be underway well before then, with North Carolina set to mail out ballots as soon as this Friday. As voters will soon be able to make their decisions on who the next president of the U.S. will be, the state remains a big question for both candidates.
Now that September has kicked off, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will be slowly making a transition from campaign season to one of elections.
North Carolina is set to be the first state to mail absentee ballots, but won't begin in-person voting until mid-October. Likewise, five other states will start early voting this month: Pennsylvania (Sept. 16), Minnesota (Sept. 20), Virginia (Sept. 20), Vermont (Sept. 21), and Illinois (Sept. 26).
Federal law also requires absentee ballots for overseas and military voters to be mailed out 45 days before the election— on Sept. 21.
As ballots prepare to be mailed out, the race for the White House in the Old North State remains intense as ever.
North Carolina has turned increasingly red in the past few years, and it has only voted for one Democratic presidential candidate since 1980— Barack Obama in 2008. But this year, it has emerged as the surprise swing state, with polls constantly showing a virtual tie between Harris and Trump, with the former president holding a miniscule lead.
In fact, the Cook Political Report moved North Carolina from "lean Republican" to a "toss up" at the end of August, writing that the state "looks more competitive than ever" since Harris entered the race. Similarly, the Cook Political Report Swing State Project survey taken in late July/early August shows Harris leading Trump by one point, 48% to 47% after Biden trailed Trump by seven points, 41% to 48%, in that same survey in May.
FiveThirtyEight shows a similar picture, with Trump leading by less than a percentage point, at 0.6%. That number has slightly fluctuated in recent weeks, but the gap has not widened.
If Harris wins the state, she has a 96.7% chance of winning the election, Forbes reports. If Trump emerges victorious, his chances of winning the electoral college stang at 76.6%.
North Carolina's shift to the left has largely been credited to a population increase among potential voters who typically back Democrats— including the highly educated— especially from a 5.6% increase since 2020 near the "research triangle" area of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, according to Forbes.
The tie in North Carolina is also an issue seemingly looming over the candidates.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Trump, is trying to halt the absentee process in North Carolina so he can get off the ballot. But barring a last-minute intervention from the judge in a hearing scheduled for Thursday, the ballots will go out on Friday with Kennedy's name on them.
The rest of September will be filled with election related events. On Sept. 10, Trump and Harris will face off in their first presidential debate. The former President is due to be sentenced on Sept. 18 in his hush money case. On Sept. 26, a New York state appellate court is also set to hear oral arguments for Trump's appeal of his civil fraud judgment.
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