2020 North Carolina Elections

It's March 31, 1992, and then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and California Governor Jerry Brown Jr. are both at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York, debating education in urban America and sparring over tuition affordability — and gun control — just before the Democratic Party's presidential primaries.

Names of Confederates, segregationists, and white supremacists on campus and government buildings have captured most of the public’s attention when it comes to how institutions are reckoning with structural racism. However, several prisons across the South also bear the names of problematic figures, or former plantations.

Host Leoneda Inge talks with Keri Blakinger, investigative reporter for The Marshall Project, about contextualizing the names of prisons in the South.

Leoneda also recaps the just-wrapped Democratic National Convention, and highlights the significance of the event’s roll call of delegates.
 

Few people, if anyone, track voting data in North Carolina more closely than Michael Bitzer. The Catawba College political scientist posts near daily upates on his Old North State Politics blog, crunching the latest numbers from elections officials across the state. And Bitzer's steady stream of tweets make something very clear: 2020 is shaping up to be very different from previous presidential election years.

The all-virtual Democratic National Convention ends tonight with a speech from the party's presidential nominee, Joe Biden.

This week, Democratic delegates from across the country, including North Carolina, have joined the convention mostly from their homes.

While races for the White House and North Carolina Executive Mansion headline the many political contests of 2020, there is perhaps no greater prize up for grabs than power of state legislatures. In addition to weighing-in on Donald Trump or Joe Biden, Roy Cooper or Dan Forest, North Carolina voters will also determine who gets authority over the next round of redistricting.

This week: American political history was made as Joe Biden introduced U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate in the presidential race. Her presence on the ticket might impact voter turnout in North Carolina. Then again, it might not.

Meanwhile, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest dropped a lawsuit against his gubernatorial opponent, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation and Rob Schofield from NC Policy Watch discuss those developments, plus: what Postmaster General Louis DeJoy means for 2020, and signs of relief for North Carolinians who are still out of work.

What insight do the polls hold less than 90 days away from the November elections? North Carolina has remained a bright purple target in the Electoral College and has received increased attention from presidential candidates in the 21st century. Former Vice President Joe Biden currently holds the lead in the Old North State, with four percentage points over President Donald Trump in a CBS Battleground Tracker Poll published on Aug. 2.

Registering to vote is usually an interactive, interpersonal effort, where organizations host registration events at college campuses or churches. But in the time of pandemic, it's changed the way nonprofit organization are reaching potential voters.