North Carolina and Georgia have both been projected to break in favor of Donald Trump—dashing the hopes of Democrats who were hoping to take an early lead in the southern swing states.
Early on Wednesday morning, both NBC and CNN projected Trump would win Georgia—flipping a state that President Joe Biden won in a narrow contest in 2020.
Trump won North Carolina in both 2016 and 2020, but Kamala Harris’ team hoped she could flip it with an unpopular, scandal-scarred GOP gubernatorial candidate also on the ballot.
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The state is the first among seven toss-ups—the others being Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin— to be called this election.
The Tar Heel state now extends its red streak for another four years, with the last Democrat to carry the state in a presidential race coming in 2008 when Barack Obama bested John McCain.
Trump carried North Carolina in 2020 and defeated Joe Biden by about 74,000 votes.
Trump and and Harris both campaigned hard and often in North Carolina, with Harris trekking to the state for campaign rallies six times. Trump, meanwhile, racked up 11 stops in the state, according to Axios data.
The Associated Press, NBC, and CNN all called the race for North Carolina between 11 p.m. and 11:45 p.m. EST.
It’s a massive win for Republicans at the national level. But at the state level the North Carolina GOP saw its candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, lose handedly to the state’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Stein.
Robinson’s campaign was beset by scandal after a CNN investigation revealed an alleged history of lewd and racist comments on a porn forum, where he allegedly referred to himself as a “Black Nazi.”
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