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Turnout in Mecklenburg County lagged in this election. Again.
While 73.4% of North Carolina voters went to the polls, only 69.7% of Mecklenburg registered voters did so.
The county’s disengagement — and Democrats’ multimillion-dollar campaign to fix it — was a national story leading up to the election (Can Charlotte, N.C. Deliver for Kamala Harris?) and after (The State’s Democrats Ask: What the Meck?)
We will get to those overarching questions about turnout in a bit.
But the immediate situation is that the county Democratic Party is in a bit of turmoil.
Last year, Drew Kromer replaced Jane Whitley as county party chair. Kromer, who is 27, was laser-focused on boosting turnout and raised more money than past party chairs — $2 million to be exact. He hired about 20 full-time people.
But in the aftermath of the election, the party’s former executive director, Monifa Drayton, announced she was quitting. Drayton, who is Black, had apparently been “layered,” with an outside hire, Julia Buckner, who is white, brought in to do her job.
In a resignation letter, she said her experience at the county party was like “professional Black women during the Jim Crow era.”
On Thursday, Mecklenburg County Commission member and longtime Democrat Arthur Griffin criticized Kromer over the Drayton saga. In an email sent to party leaders, Griffin, who is Black, wrote that he would “never stand by idly and allow a young, conscientious, smart, and resolute young African American woman to be castigated in public by someone with your skill set without protest.”
He ended his email: “I am asking for you and the other co-conspirators to immediately step aside from leadership of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party.”
Kromer declined to comment.
The county party will vote on a chair at its meeting in April, whether that’s Kromer or someone else.
Demographic challenges
That’s the immediate drama.
I also thought it would be important to dig a little deeper into why Mecklenburg voters aren’t carrying their weight.
First of all, the turnout problem is not the result of the county having too many dormant registered voters, thus lowering the turnout percentage. When you compare votes by overall population, Mecklenburg still lags.
One hurdle is that Mecklenburg County has a large percentage of Democrats, who historically have lower turnout than Republicans. But it’s not insurmountable.
Durham County, for instance, has a greater percentage of Democrats than Mecklenburg. It also has higher turnout.
So I looked up some stats from the Census Bureau on some other demographic information to get some insight into Mecklenburg.
Residents who speak a language other than English at home:
N.C.: 13.7%
Wake: 19.8%
Mecklenburg: 22.7%
Residents who are foreign-born:
N.C.: 9.2%
Wake: 15.7%
Mecklenburg: 16.9%
Residents who moved from another state in the last year:
N.C.: 3.2%
Wake: 3.7%
Mecklenburg: 4.2%
Residents who are 65 and older:
N.C.: 17.7%
Wake: 13.4%
Mecklenburg: 12.3%
What you get when you put it all together: A population in Mecklenburg that’s on average younger, more likely to be new to the area, more likely to be foreign-born and not speaking English at home. And that means Democrats here are just swimming upstream against the demographic tides.
There are, of course, many foreign-born and non-English speakers who vote. But it stands to reason that those residents may be less inclined to get engaged, as they are focused on building a new life in the country. (Some may not be citizens and unable to vote.)
As for having a smaller share of older voters, that’s another hurdle for voter participation. Gen X, Boomers, and the Silent Generation vote in larger numbers than Millennials and Gen Z.
On closer examination, a good sign for North Carolina Democrats
Four years ago Donald Trump won North Carolina by 1.3 percentage points.
This year he won it by 3.4%.
That’s a shift of 2.1% to the right. Bad for Democrats, of course.
But the national popular vote shifted much more to the GOP than what happened here. Though California is still counting votes, it appears as though the nation swung 6.5 points to the right.
I did some quick math, and it appears there were only six states plus Washington, D.C., that had a smaller shift than North Carolina: Kansas (1.6%), Nebraska (2%), Oklahoma (2%), Oregon (1.7%), Utah (0.2%), Wisconsin (1.4%) and D.C. (0.8%).
Does this mean the Harris campaign struck a chord with North Carolina voters? Does it mean the state’s demographics are shifting in the Democrats’ direction — even though the final result didn’t?
Whatever the reason, North Carolina (+3.4% Republican) is now more closely aligned with the national popular vote (+2% Republican) than it has been in … a long, long time.
(I went back as far as 1972 and then stopped checking.)
