Mark Robinson had a bad week. No matter your political leanings, we can all agree on that.
But was it bad enough to impact how voters will vote for president in North Carolina? Will Robinson’s floundering campaign (down double digits in most every respectable poll in the last six weeks) have a “reverse coattails” effect on Donald Trump?
The effect of traditional coattails is real and well-documented: a strong candidate at the top of the ticket lifts same-party down-ballot candidates. See: Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Barack Obama in 2008.
But for “reverse coattails” to happen in North Carolina this year, it would mean a significant number of moderate but Republican-leaning voters, who are put off by Robinson, would also not vote for Trump. That could occur in two ways: those voters would simply not vote at all, or they would vote for Josh Stein and Kamala Harris.
The Harris campaign is certainly counting on this possibility, as they have doubled down on an expensive statewide advertising blitz and ground game to try to link Trump to Robinson.
In a state with the second-most electoral college votes (16) of any tossup state — behind only Pennsylvania and tied with Georgia — where the presidential election race could be decided by a few thousand votes (or, gasp, a few hundred?) this “reverse coattail” phenomenon could be a determining factor.
But how likely is it?
“It's entirely possible that Mark Robinson will damage the Republican brand enough so that some Republican-leaning irregular voters will simply stay home,” said Chris Cooper, political science professor at Western Carolina University and the author of Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer. "The problem is that those irregular voters are the hardest to identify and the hardest to reach, so polls, while helpful, may not truly tell us what's going on.”
One of those somewhat helpful polls came out Friday. The latest Meredith College Poll was in the process of collecting data when the CNN story broke last week, and it seems to have recorded this exact phenomenon — voters bailing on Robinson but not switching their allegiance to Stein and Harris:
The first two days of data collection showed the electoral gap between Josh Stein and Mark Robinson at about 8 points–50-42. However, the group that answered our survey after the story broke had a 13-point gap (50-37). In the end, our survey indicates that Josh Stein has a double-digit lead over Robinson (50-40), but it appears that the CNN story peeled Robinson supporters away from him without adding to Stein’s support.
The same poll finds Harris and Trump tied at 48% each. That seems to indicate that “reverse coattails” in North Carolina might be a Democratic pipe dream.
Additionally, if history is a guide, Robinson may not lose to Stein by as large a margin as it appears now.
“I suspect that the actual margin in the gubernatorial vote in November will be smaller than the current polling average,” said David McLennan, Meredith College Poll Director. “This is not because the polls are wrong, but that some Republican or Republican-leaning voters simply won’t be able to vote for a Democrat.”
Regardless, there is likely to be a lot of ticket splitting on Election Day. That scenario — a Democratic governor and a Republican president winning North Carolina in the same election — has played out in six of the last eight elections.
But there is one other impact the “Robinson Effect” might have. It could motivate fringe Democratic voters to show up in greater numbers — lifting Stein, Harris, and every other Democrat on the ballot. Democrats have historically benefitted more in high-turnout elections (although some research shows that hasn’t been the case since 2016).
If what’s happening in North Carolina right now doesn’t get those less-engaged Democratic voters out to the polls, nothing will.
“In a state where the margins are as tight as they are in North Carolina,” says Cooper, “it's not an exaggeration to say that everything matters.”
