In Guilford County, North Carolina, home of Greensboro and High Point, it was difficult to get Democrats involved or excited about the presidential race.
‘It was like pulling teeth to get people to volunteer before,’ recalled county Democratic party chair Kathy Kirkpatrick.
People did not want to come out and knock on doors when President Biden was at the top of the ticket. They didn’t want to make phone calls or write postcards. She called it ‘a depression.’
But as soon as Biden dropped out and endorsed Kamala Harris, that all changed.
‘My goodness, we are registering new volunteers 20-30 times a day right now,’ Kirkpatrick said. ‘We registered a couple hundred volunteers the first week after she announced.’
In Wake County, home of Raleigh, Democratic party chair Kevyn Creech said people were working hard with Biden as the nominee, but there was a sense of fear about preserving democracy.
Now, she believes the campaign is more about hope. Democrats have been ‘rejuvenated, refreshed, reenergized,’ she claimed.
‘It really did change the whole demeanor and perhaps even trajectory of how this race is going to work out,’ Creed said. ‘In about two weeks between when she announced or that she was going to go for it, we got hundreds of volunteers signing up.’
‘The shift from Sunday to Monday was so stark that I was shocked at the level of enthusiasm,’ added Jenny Marshall, Democratic chair in Forsyth County which includes Winston-Salem.
Democrats and the Harris campaign see North Carolina as a state they have an opportunity to flip blue in November. Local party officials there believe it’s much more viable now than they viewed it a month ago.
The last Democratic presidential candidate to win North Carolina was Barack Obama back in 2008.
Since then, Mitt Romney won it in 2012 and Donald Trump won it in 2016 and in 2020 by less than 75,000 votes.
But the state has also elected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper twice despite Trump winning at the top of the ticket.
‘I have that 2008 feeling,’ Cooper told the crowd at a Kamala Harris event on Friday in Raleigh, eluding to Obama’s win sixteen years ago. ‘We in North Carolina know what that means.’
New polling shows Harris has largely erased the five to six point lead Trump had over Biden in the state.
A new New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters in North Carolina showed Harris at 49 percent and Trump at 47 percent.
The Cook Political Report poll last week put Harris and Trump in a statistical tie with Harris at 48 percent among likely voters compared to Trump’s 47 percent.
Both campaigns are treating North Carolina as a deeply purple state.
Trump has been through multiple times in recent weeks alone including last Wednesday for a speech in Asheville that was billed as remarks about the economy.
Harris has shown up eight times this year including on Friday to give her own economic policy address.
When it comes to putting the state in play, it likely comes down to turnout and that means a robust ground game, said professor Michael Bitzer, Department of Politics chair at Catawba College.
‘Democrats have been doing what they needed to do and hadn’t been doing since 2008 and that is making a major investment in the ground game operations as opposed to the air war operations,’ he said.
He pointed to a growing number of Democrats’ field offices and renewed motivation with Harris at the top of the ticket.
‘It is an uphill climb, but they are doing everything that they need to do to get to the mountain top,’ he said.
Republicans had been beating Democrats in the state with registering voters, but that has also been shaken up in recent weeks.
‘What we’ve seen since July 21 has been a small but noticeable spike up in Democrats registering, so that’s probably the Harris effect,’ said Bitzer.
‘In general, Democrats have been losing registration, Republicans have been pretty much stabilized – they add more than they lose – and the unaffiliated [voters] are just blowing everybody out of the water,’ he noted.
North Carolina now has more voters registered as unaffiliated than Democrat or Republican. It is primarily being driven by voters under 45 including Gen Z and millennials who are turned off by partisan registration.
While these younger people tend to vote more with Democrats, they also have not shown up at the necessary turnout levels for Democrats to overcome the built in GOP advantage.
Some Democratic party officials believe that engagement has changed in recent weeks.
Liz Purvis is the Democratic party chair in Granville County north of Raleigh. It is a majority-minority county that Obama won but went red for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Purvis said there has been a boost in volunteers and enthusiasm there just like in Democratic strongholds as well as something she hasn’t seen before.
‘We’ve had some new repeat canvassers in the last couple of weeks who are young voters, who are not only from Granville, but young folks from Wake County,’ she said.
They live in a safe blue district and believe they can make a greater difference heading to Granville.
‘I think in Granville what we’re going to see is how this county goes, so goes North Carolina,’ Purvis said. ‘We’re going to act like we’re ten points down, but there’s a real feeling it could go blue that I don’t feel was there a month ago.’
At a canvassing event on a Saturday morning in Raleigh, there were more than two-dozen volunteers.
Organizers said the number was consistent with what they have been seeing at volunteer events throughout the summer, but nearly half the volunteers on August 17 were new.
When organizers saw all the new names, they put out a call for ‘veteran’ volunteers as well, so the new attendees could team up with someone who had gone door-knocking before.
Abby Burton, 74, was one of the ‘veterans’ who showed up bright and early. She said there has been a 180 when it comes to the excitement level with Democrats heading into November.
‘The thing that I keep saying is this is not a moment, it’s a movement,’ Burton said of the change with Harris.
‘What I’ve seen since the shift is not just with people I’m talking to when I’m door knocking, but people talk about their younger kids and their grandchildren who now want to get involved.’