North Carolina In Two Snapshots | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: The article below appeared in John Hood's daily column in his publication, the Carolina Journal, which, because of Author / Publisher Hood, is inextricably linked to the John Locke Foundation.

    RALEIGH     More than a third of voters turned out for North Carolina's primary elections, far higher than the normal turnout in a presidential year and almost as high as the record turnout for the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama slugfest in 2008.

    But this year's primary electorate was quite different from the one that turned out four years ago. It overwhelmingly placed a marriage amendment in the state constitution, winnowed several crowded congressional primaries into man-to-man runoffs to be held in July, and gave both Democrats and Republicans a lot to think about as they plan their fall campaigns.

    North Carolina politics is a study in contrasts. It's a state that voted five times for Jim Hunt and five times for Jesse Helms - including once in the same year, 1996. It's a state that made history in 2008 by opting for the nation's first black president - and then made history in 2010 by opting for a Republican legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.

    You can see the contrasts by looking at two political snapshots: Orange County in the Triangle and Wilkes County in the west.

    Orange County - home to UNC-Chapel Hill and a disproportionate share of the state's liberal voters - had one of North Carolina's highest turnouts for the primary: 44 percent, or 10 points higher than the statewide average. The vast majority of Orange voters chose the Democratic ballot. They voted 79-21 against the marriage amendment but gave Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton the same share of the vote for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, 45 percent, that he got statewide.

    Wilkes County - a sprawling, conservative county with a disproportionate number of evangelical voters - had an even higher turnout for the primary than Orange County did: 50 percent. The vast majority of Wilkes voters chose the Republican ballot. They voted 83-17 for the marriage amendment but gave Mitt Romney the same share of the vote for the Republican presidential nomination, 69 percent, that he got statewide.

    You can think of these two counties, then, as representing the core of the two political coalitions that compete as Democrats and Republicans. Orange County is quite a bit more populous, admittedly. But if you combine Wilkes with three neighboring counties with similar demographics and voting behavior - Alleghany, Ashe, and Yadkin - you create a GOP-heavy bloc than produced about as many votes in the primary (42,292) as Democrat-heavy Orange (45,855).

    Until relatively recently, North Carolina was a strongly Democratic state. While the party lost its lock on the state's presidential votes in the 1950s, Democrats controlled the congressional delegation, the legislature, and the vast majority of local governments until the 1990s. When GOP presidential candidates did particularly well in North Carolina, candidates such as Jim Holshouser (1972) and Jim Martin (1984) were able to win the governor's office. But the default vote was Democratic.

    In today's North Carolina, there is no default vote. Republicans have not replaced Democrats as a majority party. Vigorous competition is the norm. After 2006 and 2008 cycles that went the Democrats' way, the 2010 cycle went strongly the other way - Republicans took majorities in the congressional delegation and both houses of the legislature, while reaching parity with Democrats in county commissions.

    Based on the primary results, Republicans have to feel pretty good about their chances of making 2012 another favorable cycle in North Carolina. Despite the fact that the only high-profile statewide primary was the Democratic race for governor, there were almost as many Republican ballots cast as Democratic ones. The marriage amendment was obviously a big factor here. If it had been on the ballot in November, it would have boosted GOP prospects across the board (which is why it was Democratic politicians, not Republican ones, who pushed for the May referendum). But the turnout differential still represents momentum that GOP leaders and candidates will seek to sustain through the general election. And it comports with other data showing that, at least for now, Republicans appear to be more highly motivated.

    Democrats hope that North Carolina politics offers up another sharp contrast: May vs. November.