North Carolina’s 2024 key wins and political trends explained

As the dust settles on North Carolina’s pivotal 2024 elections, political pundits like National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru are calling it a wake-up call for both parties.

With razor-thin margins, surprising shifts in urban voting trends, and renewed debates over school choice and immigration, the results underscore why the Tar Heel State remains a bellwether for national politics—and a magnet for presidential hopefuls.

Also a Washington Post columnist and American Enterprise Institute fellow, Ponnuru was recently in Cary, North Carolina revealing the political lessons of 2024.

“Neither party can take victory for granted, and they have to run smart campaigns, and that would seem to be a kind of obvious truth, but North Carolina did nominate Mark Robinson of the North Carolina Republican Party, which suggests that sometimes the obvious political truths need restating,” Ponnuru told Carolina Journal.

North Carolina, a state that has consistently voted for Trump, but has a two-term Democratic governor in Roy Cooper, a split Council of State, and a decade-long Republican majority in the state legislature, reflects primarily geographical divisions. Democratic voters are more clustered in cities, whereas Republican voters dominate urban and exurban areas. There are some signs, however, that that is changing a bit in the most recent election cycle, where Republicans made some gains in suburban and urban core areas. 

“North Carolina is a swing state, and I think it’s going to continue to be one, and of course, that puts it in a minority of states and gives it outsized importance,” Ponnuru told CJ. “It means the presidential candidates are going to pay a lot of attention to what goes on here, and it also means that North Carolina is likely to have a more hotly contested senate and gubernatorial races than a lot of other states have these days. This comes with pros and cons, and if North Carolinians don’t like seeing a barrage of political ads every two years, then maybe they need to pick one party or the other to avoid, but I don’t think that that’s going to change anytime soon.” 

giving trump a chance

Ponnuru told policy experts at the gathering in Cary that this most recent election cycle reflects what seems to be true of voters everywhere but is especially true of voters in NC:

Those who switched to voting for Trump from the previous election cycle are demonstrating that they are willing to give Trump a chance. 

“There is a decisive group of voters that is open to persuasion, and one of the great myths of politics in the last 20 years is that all successful campaigns come down to mobilizing your core supporters and not to persuading people,” remarked Ponnuru. “Again and again, we have seen people who back one party’s candidates switch to the other party’s candidates. It’s true that we have a lot more party line voting than we used to, but those people in the middle, although there may be fewer of them, they’re just as decisive as ever, and there are people who will not vote for a Republican candidate if that candidate seems nutty or unethical, or not interested in the concerns that normal people have. Republicans need to make nomination decisions with that in mind, and their candidates need to conduct their campaigns with that in mind.” 

Ponnuru also sees emerging trends in public policy like school choice, which has been a hotly contested issue in North Carolina, especially this year with Opportunity Scholarships and the passage of HB 10. 

“A lot is going on that is grounds for hope among conservatives,” said Ponnuru. “There has been an explosion of school choice around the country. School choice has probably had its best year in the history of that movement, and I don’t think that the educational progress that we’re making is confined to K to 12. Many interesting things are happening in higher education, particularly in red states or states where you’ve got a significant red presence, including North Carolina, where the ideological monoculture of the contemporary American campus is increasingly being challenged. You are seeing new institutions spring up that are willing to give other points of view a hearing, so those are some places where I think you will see some up-and-coming new trends.” 

Ponnuru spoke broadly about the challenges facing the incoming Trump administration.

He asserted that part of Trump’s success is the stark contrast with Biden and Harris during the campaign season, but said Trump’s popularity could dwindle when he stands alone on the national stage.

Ponnuru pointed out that immigration, inflation, and how the administration handles these issues will play a role in its success or failure. He believes that if the Trump administration can extend tax cuts, keep inflation low, and make progress concerning immigration, it can succeed.

classical liberalism

Classical liberalism in the modern political scene is still a vital part of the political landscape, according to Ponnuru. A commitment to limited government and free markets has a strong emphasis in the incoming Trump administration. 

“I think that is still relevant; it’s not dominant, but it’s still an important part of American politics,” concluded Ponnuru. “It’s the reason why this pending Trump administration places so much emphasis on deregulation: because the economic logic of deregulation remains compelling, and because a lot of voters are averse to micromanagement from Washington DC, it retains its political appeal. A lot of the populist energy of our current moment is about skepticism of the expert class. If you’re skeptical of the expert class, then you are, I think, going to be skeptical of big government.” 

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