“On a knife’s edge”: How North Carolina could decide the US election | News about the 2024 US election

About 20 years ago, in the early 2000s, Paul Shumaker's party experienced a worrying trend.

Shumaker, a Republican activist with a classic Carolinian style, laid it out for Al Jazeera in stark terms: Republican registration began to decline, while the number of “independent” voters gradually increased.

“Now there are no liberal Republicans and there are fewer moderate Republicans,” Shumaker said.

He shared data showing that both major parties, Republicans and Democrats, have invested a total of more than $147 million in the state over the past decade — but even that hasn't stopped an “explosion” of unaffiliated voters who now do it are the clear majority.

Of the 8.5 million voters in North Carolina this year, about 38 percent are registered as “unaffiliated.” That dwarfs the 32 percent who identify as Democrats and the 30 percent who identify as Republicans.

This explosion of “independent” voters is consistent with larger demographic trends that show Americans defying traditional party labels, increasing the unpredictability of elections.

However, this does not mean that “independent” voters will choose a third party candidate. Polls have shown that the majority of independent voters actually consistently lean toward either the Republican side or the Democrats.

This means that they are very popular – and in demand – with the two major parties.

“No party can win without building a coalition for unaffiliated voters,” Shumaker said.

He said Republicans need to appeal to independent voters in the suburbs and cities – two areas where Democrats are expected to win.

Democrats, meanwhile, hope to tap “independent” voters to offset losses among their base. More than 2.4 million people in North Carolina registered as Democrats as of Oct. 26 — down from more than 2.6 million at about the same point in the 2020 election cycle.

Party strategists like Jackson hope to offset the loss by appealing to voters in left-wing strongholds — typically urban centers — while asserting themselves in rural areas.

After all, North Carolina has the largest rural population in the United States after Texas.

“People often say that in rural areas you have to lose less, but that's not true: you just have to stop the bleeding,” Jackson said. “If Kamala Harris maintains (outgoing President) Joe Biden’s lead, she could have a chance.”

Mac McCorkle, a Democratic political consultant with a cheerful, affable demeanor, calls independent voters “valuable” to his party. He believes only a small number of voters will decide whether North Carolina supports Harris or Trump.

“It’s not like 20 percent of voters can go either way,” he said. “We’re talking about a race that is decided by one, two, three percent.”