In downtown Pembroke, across from the train tracks and a stone’s throw from diners and coffee shops, stands the RNC Community Center.
Open since 2022, the community hub is one of a handful nationwide, strategically placed by the Republican National Committee to connect with minority voters.
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Robeson County is a majority-minority county, with 60% of the population Native American and Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
A notoriously blue, Democratic county throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Robeson County has been on a steady political shift to the right throughout the past decade or more.
“We never left the Democratic Party, they left us,” said Phillip Stephens, the Robeson County GOP Chairman.
Stephens, a registered Democrat in the 1980s before joining the Republican Party, has been involved in getting Robeson County voters off the Democratic voter rolls for more than a decade.
“It was not a big ideological push,” Stephens said. “We simply were there to take the space that, the void that was created when the Democratic Party kind of shifted more to the left and the Republicans simply had friends that we shared ideology with.”
There are still more Robeson County voters registered as Democrats than Republicans, but a WRAL analysis of State Board of Elections data over the past 20 years found that Republican voter registrations went up 94%, from 7,274 registrations in December 2004 to 14,111 by July 27, 2024. In that same time frame, Democratic voter registrations went down 40%, from 56,516 to 33,949. Unaffiliated registrations went up 327%, from 5,942 to 25,367.
Eight Democratic and Republican insiders who spoke to WRAL Investigates about this Republican registration surge in Robeson County have similar explanations for it. First, they point to Democrats’ faded presence in the county. As well, they say some conservative Democratic voters felt ideologically disconnected from the party.
“And about 2012, 2014 [Republicans] started to show up,” said state Rep. Jarrod Lowery, R-Robeson County. “They started to come to the communities, they started eating in our restaurants, coming to our churches, coming to our events and asking for our votes.”
A WRAL analysis of voter registrations in 25 counties in and around WRAL’s viewing area revealed comparable trends to what’s happened in Robeson County.
Twenty counties have had double- or triple-digit percentage gains in Republican voter registrations from 2004 through mid-July 2024. Local counties with more urban areas and larger populations, like Durham, Orange and Wake, saw the opposite trend, with Democrats making the big gains. However, Democratic voter registration decreased in 17 counties over the past 20 years.
The greatest gains were for registered unaffiliated voters, which grew by triple digits in all 25 local counties that WRAL analyzed.
Anderson Clayton, the North Carolina Democratic Party chairwoman, credits Republicans for their strategic push into rural counties.
“Republicans have strong operations in these counties,” Clayton said. “The one thing I would give the Republican Party here credit for, [former North Carolina Republican Party Chairman] Michael Whatley, he did believe in infrastructure. And, I think that that’s the backbone of any party, is someone being there to help set it up, but also folks there to help recruit local candidates.”
One rural Democrat who has maintained his hold on power is longtime state Rep. Garland Pierce, currently serving his tenth term.
“We’ve got to do a better job as Democrats to once again get back in those rural [counties],” Pierce said. “We’re there, but we’ve got to start hearing what people are saying and what matters to them and their families, that’s the way I see it as a long time legislator.”
Pierce told WRAL Investigates that he has managed to maintain his seat in the House by working for, and being engaged with, his constituents in a bipartisan way.
“[My constituents] know that I’m fair, they don’t have to second guess me,” Pierce said.
Pierce says he tends to get a significant amount of support from unaffiliated voters. In Hoke and Scotland Counties, which Pierce represents, unaffiliated voters rose by 142% and 260%, respectively.
Clayton, who has been in her role as chairwoman for a little more than a year, is making it a priority to get more candidates in local races in the future. Over the next decade, she plans to build a presence like Republicans have grown in rural counties.
Interactive chart: Click or tap the drop-down menu to see how voters are registered by North Carolina county