Democrats hope a Kamala Harris presidential campaign will reach the voters who helped flip North Carolina blue in 2008 but who have tended not to vote as much since then.

Young people and Black voters, particularly in rural areas, are at the top of the list of people who have low voter turnout rates but tend to lean left when they do vote. They’re widely credited with boosting Barack Obama to victory in 2008, when he became the only Democratic presidential candidate to have won North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

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When Harris, the vice president, is formally nominated to replace President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic Party ticket this month, she’ll become the party’s first Black nominee since Obama and the first Black woman to ever get the nod. Obama won the White House in 2008 with North Carolina and in 2012 without carrying the state.

The vast majority of Black voters in North Carolina are affiliated with the Democratic Party. And many rural areas in the state have substantial Black populations. In 2020, Trump won several such counties Obama won in 2008. And although Democrats still win in places such as Charlotte and Fayetteville, the party has been hampered in recent statewide elections because those large urban areas have had among the lowest voter turnout rates anywhere in the state.

In 2022, 58% of white voters cast a ballot in the midterm elections. Only 42% of Black voters did. Democrats hope nominating Harris could bring back enthusiasm in Black communities — and turn it into wins up and down the ballot. Other key races up for grabs this year include those for governor, attorney general and a seat on the state Supreme Court.

Already there are signs that Harris’s candidacy has energized Democratic voters ever since Biden dropped out on July 21. A Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll conducted from July 24 through July 28 showed that 65% of black voters said they were more likely to vote now that Biden is no longer the Democratic nominee.

Seventy-one percent of Black North Carolina respondents said they’d likely vote for Harris, according to the poll. That’s up from the 61% who said they’d vote for Biden in a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll conducted July 1 through July 4, shortly after the uneven debate performance that doomed Biden’s campaign.

Harris also received Obama’s endorsement late last month. “At a time when the stakes have never been higher, she gives us all reason to hope,” he wrote. Meanwhile, voters have given Harris and the Democratic Party gobs of money since taking over the campaign.

Shauna Williams from Warren County, a rural area north of Raleigh, was among the 44,000 people who joined a recent video conference for Black women backing Harris.

Williams said she has teared up at Harris’s image ever since Biden endorsed her. “Because, as a Black woman, to now see another Black woman in that role … I couldn't be happier. And I believe that's the sentiment of my whole community. We are ecstatic about this change.”

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee for the third consecutive time, has made inroads with Black voters since his first election in 2016.

Trump questioned Harris’ race during a gathering with Black journalists last week.

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

Harris’ father is Jamaican and was the first Black scholar to receive tenure in Stanford’s economic department, according to The New York Times. Her mother was born in India. Harris was born in Oakland.

‘Would’ve won every race’

Tom Jensen, director of Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling, said recent polling showed Trump and other Republicans doing somewhat better this year among Black voters — especially Black men — than in the past.

North Carolina Republican Party chair Jason Simmons told WRAL in a recent interview that although that vast majority of GOP voters are white, the party is making conscious efforts “to highlight our outreach, as well as our policies, that are going to be beneficial not just to our average voters, but to every voter.”

But while approval ratings for top Democrats — such as Biden and Gov. Roy Cooper — have been slipping in the past year, according to polls conducted by Meredith College political scientists, Democrats are still expected to win the vast majority of the Black vote.

Jensen said Democratic candidates across the ballot would be expected to win many key races in North Carolina this year if Black voters turn out for Harris like they did for Obama.

“If Black turnout had just been at the level in 2020 that it was in 2008 and 2012, that would’ve flipped everything,” Jensen said. “Democrats would’ve won every race they lost, particularly in the courts and the Senate.”

That could’ve had major policy implications: Democrats likely would’ve won outright control of the U.S. Senate. Republicans likely wouldn’t have been able to flip control of the state Supreme Court, or at least not as quickly as they did. The high court’s new GOP majority immediately moved to undo legal precedents on voting rights and gerrymandering, with new rulings that are expected to favor Republicans in this year and all future elections.

Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by less than 75,000 votes, or about 1.5% of the total. And Republicans won other key races — keeping a U.S. Senate seat and flipping three Democratic-held state Supreme Court seats — all by similarly razor-thin margins. The state Supreme Court chief justice election that year came down to just 401 votes, out of 5.4 million.

In November, Democrats are hoping to defend another seat on the state Supreme Court, ensure they keep the governor’s mansion even as the term-limited Cooper can’t run again, and break control of the Republicans’ veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature. But they’ll need Black voters’ help to do it — not only convincing infrequent voters to turn out this year, but also to stop more moderate or conservative-leaning Black voters from switching to the GOP.

“There has been a degradation of support for Democratic candidates among Black and Brown voters,” said David McLennan, a Meredith College political science professor. He said many of those voters — particularly those with less than a college education — is where support is falling off. “I suspect it's that they feel … like Democrats aren't doing enough for them, or they're being taken for granted,” he said.

What the polls show

A survey from Public Policy Polling showed Republican Donald Trump leading Democrat Joe Biden in North Carolina by a 6-point margin, 48% to 42%. The poll finished a day before Biden dropped out. It also tested Harris’s support, finding that she would close the gap.

Subsequent polling appears to support the hypothesis that a Harris campaign would perform better than Biden in North Carolina. The late-July Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll showed Harris trailing Trump by 1 percentage point in the state, down from the 2-point lead Trump held over Biden in the early-July Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll.

Democrats’ efforts to replace Cooper as governor shows more promise, according to Public Policy Polling. Democrat Josh Stein was leading 48% to 42% on Republican Mark Robinson.

Jensen said Stein’s performance was bolstered in large part by white suburban voters who tend to lean Republican but appear unwilling to back Robinson — who is notable not only for his chance to make history as the state’s first-ever Black governor, but also for a history of divisive comments about women, the Civil Rights movement, Jews and LGBTQ people.

In 2016 and 2020, a significant number of white moderates supported Trump and Cooper. A key question for 2024 among political analysts will be whether Black voters do something similar, supporting Harris but also Robinson.

The recent Public Policy Polling survey indicated that could be the case for some: Harris led Trump among Black voters by a 78%-to-16% margin, whereas Stein led Robinson by a 68%-to-21% margin.

North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton acknowledged Democrats have work to do in rural areas — particularly the 18 rural counties with a majority-minority population. In recent elections, some of them have trended more conservative.

“Rural politics, to me, is still very retail,” Clayton told WRAL. “People want to shake the hand of somebody that they're going to vote for. It's why I've said to [Harris’] campaign, I want her out in eastern North Carolina this year campaigning in those rural counties.”

‘A little skeptical’

Ahead of this year’s election, groups such as the New Rural Project have sprung up in North Carolina. While technically nonpartisan, its stated focus is on reaching “young and marginalized residents in rural communities” — the voters who propelled Obama’s win in North Carolina in 2008 but who have often stayed home on election day since then.

It focuses on a wide swath of North Carolina between Charlotte and Fayetteville. Home base is in Anson County, a majority-minority county that Obama won by 20 points in 2008. Biden won it by just 4 points in 2020, and the county flipped red in the 2022 U.S. Senate race.

Cynthia Wallace, the group’s co-founder and executive director, said her group’s workers often encountered people who described Biden as too old or “just not the right person.” But since the shift to Harris, she said, there has been a broader sense of “relief, energy, excitement” among people in the communities her group serves.

But it hasn’t been all celebration.

Some Black voters, and particularly Black men, are skeptical of Harris’ former career as a prosecutor, Wallace said. They distrust the justice system and want to learn more about exactly what kind of role she played in either fighting, or supporting, what they see as widespread systemic racism in the courts.

And there’s the fact that she’s a woman, Wallace said.

“Some of the men are still a little skeptical of her,” she said. “It's a small percentage, but there are some folks that are still kind of skeptical. It's just connected to the rural part — where there's still a pretty patriarchal leadership structure in rural places. Getting people comfortable there is not necessarily just a given.”

WRAL Capitol Bureau Chief Laura Leslie and WRAL State Government Editor Jack Hagel contributed to this report.