With the presidential election only two months away, North Carolina political parties are in a fight to the finish to capture the state's changing electorate.
Although Republicans have successfully courted 36,000 newly registered voters this election cycle, Democrats have added 167,000 residents to their voter rolls in the traditionally red state.
"We were under no illusions going into 2008 that it was going to be anything other than easy," said Brent Woodcox, spokesperson for the North Carolina Republican Party.
As of Sept. 11, there were 2,693,616 registered Democrats, 1,943,590 registered Republicans and, coming in at a close third, 1,305,396 unaffiliated voters in North Carolina, illustrating the increasingly competitive political environment for the campaigns this November.
The trend is also reflected nationally, as Democrats have increased their share of registered voters in 15 states, with Republicans only making gains in six of the 26 states that require voters to register by party.
In a state where President George W. Bush captured 56 percent of the vote in 2004, the presidential campaign of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama is seeking to take advantage of the new dynamic. According to a Sept. 10 Rasmussen poll, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain leads Obama 48 percent to 42 percent.
"The Democratic primaries created a lot of interest that has carried over through voter registration," said Kerra Bolton, communications director for the North Carolina Democratic Party.
As a result, Democrats have organized further grassroots work to capitalize on the increased attention garnered by the May 6 primary between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Obama, said Paul Cox, deputy communications director for the North Carolina Obama campaign.
Woodcox said, however, that the new trends are simply a response to the last eight years under a Republican administration.
"When it's a two-percent increase as far as total number of voters, that's not a significant advantage the Democrats have gained," he said.
He added that Democrats have often enjoyed an advantage in voter registration numbers in North Carolina.
At Duke, non-partisan voter registration drives are urging students to change their registration from Democratic or Republican strongholds to North Carolina, where their votes will have more influence.
"I live in Durham nine months out of the year. I'm sort of like a citizen here," said junior Steve Schmulenson, an Illinois resident. "Illinois was pretty much a decided state, so I felt that due to the system my vote mattered more in a state like North Carolina, a projected battleground state."
Another emerging trend suggesting increasingly competitive politics in North Carolina is the rise in registered independent voters, a constituency that now represents more than 20 percent of the North Carolina electorate.
To turn North Carolina blue, Democrats must attract support among white independents and effectively encourage young adults and blacks to vote on Election Day, said Ferrell Guillory, founder and director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication and an expert in Southern politics. Campaigns must also make efforts to promote high turnout at the polls to cement gains made in voter registration, he said.
"The conventional wisdom is that the higher the turnout, the better for the Republicans [in North Carolina]," Guillory said. "The Obama campaign is trying to defy that wisdom, saying if they can get more young people, more black voters, more independents who are ready for a change that they can shift the dynamic so a greater turnout favors the Democrats."
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