House Bill 2 might not be the albatross for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s re-election bid many pundits and Democrats have suggested, and his decisive response to late October’s Charlotte riots could give him an electoral boost, based on recent election polls and the views of several political observers.
Others say Democratic opponent Roy Cooper remains in the lead when averaging various polls, with H.B. 2 remaining an effective wedge issue.
As for North Carolina’s role in the presidential race, analysts say the state will remain in focus for both Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton until the final days of the campaign. They do not expect Trump, who’s billing himself as the law-and-order candidate, to get much traction from the unrest in Charlotte in part because those events occurred more than six weeks before election day.
“Any time a governor can act, whether it’s a natural disaster, or to try quell some violence or to help a city a city, it helps the governor, said David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College.
McCrory sent the North Carolina National Guard and State Highway Patrol into Charlotte to restore calm after two nights of rioting and violence the city couldn’t contain.
As the violence subsides, if the governor is perceived to have taken decisive action, “I think it could be on the whole it will help him,” McLennan said.
Voters tend not to view local events at the presidential level, so a Trump bump from Charlotte is unlikely, McLennan said. The three presidential debates and news of the day leading to the Nov. 8 election will have more impact on Clinton and Trump, McLennan said.
“Absolutely it’s going to happen,” Joe Stewart, executive director of the N.C. Free Enterprise Foundation said of an unexpected event leading up to election day that could shape election outcomes, particularly because so many races are so tight in North Carolina.
“The X-factor in this case happened” in Charlotte, said Chris Sinclair, a partner in Cornerstone Solutions, a campaign consulting firm. He was on an election discussion panel Friday at Research Triangle Park Foundation, sponsored by the North Carolina Technology Association and moderated by Stewart.
“Who would have thought that would happen in North Carolina?” Sinclair asked. McCrory has looked decisive and “very gubernatorial” at home, and on national cable news programs, Sinclair said. “And then you see Cooper down there sort of running around with [Mayor Jennifer Roberts]. … Her leadership is just so ineffective around this.”
“The other X-factor is H.B. 2,” Sinclair said. That controversial North Carolina law requires people to use bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers matching their biological anatomy. McCrory “is embracing the suck around H.B. 2” for signing the legislation.
“It is a huge wedge issue for Cooper, and he has masterfully put that wedge in, has run a very good campaign around it,” Sinclair said.
But two recent polls cast doubt on how much damage H.B. 2 is doing to McCrory.
According to the latest Elon University Poll, 27 percent of likely voters said they are more likely to vote for McCrory because of the way he handled the legislation, and 35 percent said it makes no difference in their preference in the governor’s race. That totals 62 percent of respondents, compared to just 36 percent who said they were less likely to vote for him because of H.B. 2.
A Public Policy Polling survey of voters found similar results. Those saying H.B. 2 makes them less inclined to support McCrory totaled 41 percent; 30 percent said they were more likely to vote for him, leaving 29 percent presumably unaffected. That means 59 percent essentially did not see H.B. 2 as a major detriment for McCrory.
“They are kind of confounding results,” McLennan said, because polls also show nearly 50 percent of North Carolinians oppose H.B. 2, and even larger numbers believe it has harmed the state.
Cooper supporters likely are those saying they’re less likely to vote for McCrory, and the others might have been in McCrory’s camp already. “So that’s the difficulty of looking at a question like that. It’s very hard to determine its overall magnitude in the race,” McLennan said.
Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling, said this has been an unusual election year. In every poll there have been between 7 and 8 percent of Republican respondents who didn’t vote in 2012 because GOP nominee Mitt Romney didn’t excite them. They are “pro-Trump by 30 to 40 points,” so if their enthusiasm turns into votes, as he expects, there will be “a little bit tighter race” in North Carolina’s presidential election, he said.
“Different parts of the state have shifted in extreme ways,” Jensen said. Suburban districts Romney won by 5-10 points are now favoring Clinton. In rural areas that Romney won by 20 points Trump, is winning by 30, and Clinton is losing by even more in the rural areas where President Obama lost.
“Republicans are freaking out about Richard Burr” and his low-profile U.S. Senate re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Deborah Ross, Sinclair said. Still, he predicts Burr, like Trump, will eke out a win in North Carolina, while the Charlotte unrest now gives McCrory the edge.
Jensen also predicts Burr will win by a couple of points, while Cooper will win by 3, and Clinton will squeak past Trump.