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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Charlie Kirk Sounds Alarm on North Carolina as Kamala Harris Goes All In on Battleground State
Charlie Kirk and Blake warn that North Carolina has become a five-alarm fire for Republicans, with polling showing the state tighter than Arizona or Georgia. Once considered a safe win for Trump, North Carolina is now a dead heat, and sources indicate Kamala Harris is going all in on the state as a path to the White House. The Research Triangle's rapid growth, educated voters, and 118 universities are shifting the state's dynamics, while gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson's campaign troubles threaten to drag down the entire ticket. Kirk explains why losing North Carolina could cost Trump the presidency even if he wins Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.
North Carolina Emerges as Unexpected Battleground Crisis
Charlie Kirk opened his show with a warning about his voice, noting he's still recovering but that the situation in North Carolina demands immediate attention. Blake joined as co-pilot to break down why a state once considered a safe Republican win has become a major concern.
The typical battleground state conversation has focused on the old blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, along with sun belt states like Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. These are the five states Trump won in 2016 that flipped blue in 2020, plus Nevada which went Democrat both times but shows promise due to Hispanic voter shifts. North Carolina was always baked into the math as a given, or at least a state Republicans would only lose if they were losing badly everywhere else.
North Carolina was a Trump win in 2020, unlike Georgia and Arizona. However, the state has a history of competitive races, having voted for Obama in 2008 while Georgia did not. North Carolina differs from Georgia in important ways: it has a higher educated white voter population while Georgia has a higher black population, making North Carolina more of a swing voter state while Georgia is more of a turnout race between two sides.
The Polling Trend Shows Steady Erosion
When Biden withdrew from the race, Trump was up about six points in North Carolina. Early polling in late July still showed Trump up six points. By August, that lead had shrunk to four points, then to about 1.5 points in late August. Now the race is a dead heat. A new poll from The New York Times Siena shows Trump up only two points in North Carolina, but he leads by five in Arizona and four in Georgia in the same set of polls.
This means Republicans are more likely to lose North Carolina than Arizona or Georgia, which is deeply concerning for the electoral math. If Trump flips Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona but no other states flip, he wins. However, if he flips Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona but loses North Carolina, Kamala Harris wins the White House.
Understanding North Carolina's Unique Characteristics
North Carolina has several important characteristics that make it unpredictable. The state has a lot of out-of-staters moving in, a significant black population, and Southern roots, but it also has the Research Triangle, one of the fastest growing parts of the country. The state is eclectic and captures many trends going on across the United States.
North Carolina has old Southern elements similar to Kentucky, but the Research Triangle brings a very rapidly growing urban area with lots of educated voters, people from all around the US, and immigrant arrivals. The state also has Asheville, described as a trendy city for hipsters to move to, like a Portland in Appalachia on old Vanderbilt grounds.
The state is politically schizophrenic. North Carolina has a Democrat Governor who is popular, yet also has a Republican supermajority in the legislature that can override his vetoes to pass legislation. The state has always been competitive, and these contradictions make it difficult to predict.
The Mark Robinson Problem
One reason North Carolina looks less secure is that the Republican gubernatorial candidate, sitting Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, has not been faring well. Democrats timed their opposition research strategically, waiting until about three hours before the deadline to drop out from a North Carolina race to release a CNN article.
The article claimed to have found comments that are convincingly from an account Robinson had on a pornographic website, where he made over-the-top vulgar remarks about wild sex acts and said strange things like bring back slavery. Robinson denies it, but people aren't believing the denial. Multiple members of his campaign have quit.
Robinson was already down against a popular Democrat Governor, and it was going to be tough to flip the governorship back even with a strong candidate. Now he's down enough that there's worry about him dragging down the entire Republican ticket in North Carolina. It's making people demotivated, which can hurt turnout, while Kamala supporters are getting motivated, thinking this could bail them out even if they lose the Rust Belt, Arizona, and Nevada.
Kamala Harris Goes All In on North Carolina
According to sources in the national media, Kamala Harris is going all in on North Carolina. She believes this is one of her paths to the White House. The electoral map shows that if Republicans win Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona but lose Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, and Nevada, Kamala Harris wins. Another scenario: if Republicans win Wisconsin and Nevada but lose Georgia, they also lose the White House.
Charlie Kirk called this a five-alarm fire. No one was thinking about North Carolina as a problem state. It seemed rock solid. To prove their commitment, Turning Point Action has added multiple North Carolina appearances to their schedule to help shore things up. You have to follow where the data is going. Kirk recalled that back in 2020, Democrats said they could win Georgia and Arizona, and those on the right dismissed it. He feels the same kind of energy with how Democrats are emphasizing North Carolina now.
The Metropolitan Centers Driving the Shift
The rural areas of North Carolina are as red as Kentucky, but Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem are some of the more metropolitan centers of the South. There's a trend where Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh, and Charlotte are becoming Southern versions of Northern cities. It's not so much how left or right the individual cities are, but how big they are and how much they dominate the state.
In Tennessee, Nashville and Memphis are very blue but don't dominate the state the way Atlanta dominates Georgia. Atlanta is a huge city. In North Carolina, the Research Triangle has a lot of medium-sized cities and a ton of universities—118 universities in the state. It's the higher education superpower of the South. Duke is there, and UNC Chapel Hill is probably the most prestigious public university in the South.
The state is extremely red in the Appalachian Mountain areas, where counties break 70% or 75% Republican, with some possibly reaching 80%. That's enough to keep the state very close and enough to win it most of the time. But these cities are getting bluer, and Republicans have struggled with those voters. There's been a realignment of post-graduate degree holders who don't like Trump because they think he's rude.
Trump's Performance Compared to Other Republican Candidates
There's a belief that if Republicans just had a generic Republican not named Trump, they'd win the election easily. The question is whether data shows Trump ahead of average Republican Senate candidates, close to them, or behind them.
In the past, there have been Senate races where Trump ran behind some candidates. Marco Rubio won really easily in Florida in 2016 while Trump won it not quite as much. Ron Johnson won surprisingly easily in Wisconsin in 2016 while Trump narrowly won Wisconsin as part of his upset victory. However, those were incumbent senators who usually have some advantage to incumbency. The House Republican popular vote was also a little bit stronger in 2020 than Trump was.
On the flip side, there's a turnout aspect to Trump that changes the race, making it hard to measure his actual effect. It's plausible to say Trump could run behind a Republican in a state and yet his overall impact is to power up Republicans because he changed turnout and the overall nature of national polling.
More recently in this election, Trump is definitely running ahead as a challenger over several other Republican challengers, and significantly so. He's pulling way ahead of the Republican governor candidate in North Carolina, running ahead of Kari Lake in Arizona's Senate race, and running ahead of the Montana Senate race. Ohio will be closer in the Senate than in the general election.
It's clear that Donald Trump is running ahead of a lot of other Republican challengers this cycle. The premise that running Nikki Haley would be a walkover is bogus. Conservatives have had eight years to learn to dislike special things about Nikki Haley, like her foreign policy positions. The idea that the media would be much nicer to Nikki Haley or any other Republican is naive. Adults should understand that no matter which Republican runs, the media will attack them.
The Path Forward in North Carolina
If Trump wins North Carolina, he'll have to run up the score in places like Wilmington and other rural areas. The state's 118 universities, the growing Research Triangle, and the influx of educated voters from other parts of the country are creating challenges that didn't exist to the same degree in previous cycles.
The rural areas remain deeply conservative, but the question is whether those margins are enough to overcome the growing metropolitan influence. With Kamala Harris committing resources to North Carolina and Mark Robinson's gubernatorial campaign in trouble, Republicans cannot take this state for granted. The path to 270 electoral votes runs through multiple scenarios, and in too many of them, North Carolina is the decisive state.
