Last week the Democrats were touting the special election in North Carolina’s 9th District as the first major contest of the 2020 cycle, and the polls indicated that Democrat Dan McCready might win what should be a pretty safe GOP seat. By Wednesday morning, after Republican Dan Bishop had won, their focus had shifted and much commentary was devoted to his “thin margin of victory.” Little notice was taken of certain voting patterns that should frighten the Democrats. Specifically, McCready did far worse than expected in every county but one, and many of those counties are dominated by minority voters.
The most unnerving example, from the Democratic perspective, is rural Robeson County. The ethnic makeup of this county is as follows: Native American (38.6%), White (25.7%), Black (24%), Hispanic (8.52%), Two or More Races (2.15%), Asian (0.66%), Other (0.275%). On Tuesday the Democrat received a fraction of the votes he received in 2018, running for the same seat. Ryan Matsumoto of Inside Elections provides the gory details: “McCready won Robeson County by only 1.11 points, a MASSIVE decrease from his 15.31 point margin last November.” In 2012, Obama carried Robeson by 17 points.
This is a county of about 143,000, and 74 percent of these folks are clearly not the racist rednecks the Democrats would have us believe make up most of the Trump/GOP base. The shift away from McCready was the result of disenchantment among minority voters with the Democrat. Moreover, though Robeson was the most obvious, it was by no means the only ethnically diverse county whose voters “walked away.” Nearly 60 percent of Cumberland County’s approximately 333,000 residents are Black, Hispanic, or a member of some other minority group. McCready won it in 2018. Dan Bishop won Cumberland on Tuesday.
Much the same scenario was played out in every county except the affluent white areas of Mecklenburg County, the only place where the Democrat improved on his 2018 performance. Bishop only flipped two new counties from blue to red, but he turned several from dark blue to pale blue, reducing McCready’s margins in enough ethnically diverse rural counties to win. So, what’s going on here? The answer will be obvious to all but the willfully blind. Despite consistent attempts by the Democrats to frighten minorities with evidence-free claims that the economy is faltering, no one is buying that tale.
A Harvard-Harris poll released in early September asked the question, “How strong do you think the U.S. economy is today?” A majority of Blacks (53%) answered, “Strong.” In answer to the same question, a majority of Hispanics (54%) gave the same answer. These are far higher marks than any GOP president has received, particularly from Blacks. It isn’t necessary to consult the Delphic Oracle to discover why they are responding in this fashion. Black unemployment hit 5.5 percent in August, the lowest rate on record. Breitbart points out a secondary effect of this record overlooked by most of the “news” media:
One result: the persistent gap between white and black unemployment also narrowed to its smallest on record. The unemployment ratio has averaged around 2 to 1 or so for decades, meaning the black unemployment rate is typically twice the white unemployment rate. In good times, the unemployment rate of whites and blacks falls but the gap remains…. [B]lack unemployment typically remains around twice that of white employment…. In other words, the decline in employment inequality now is undeniably the best on record because it comes in the context of falling unemployment.
President Trump took pains to point this out at his North Carolina rally on Monday, explaining that he needs the help of people like Dan Bishop to keep the economy strong and to continue creating jobs for all Americans. He also called out “the other Dan” for supporting Nancy Pelosi on higher taxes, sanctuary cities, and radical abortion policies. More to the point, he said, “On jobs, and taxes, and importers, Dan McCready is wrong and Dan Bishop is right.” He went on to say, “Here in North Carolina over 230,000 more people have jobs, and small business formation has skyrocketed by more than 25 percent.” Later, Bishop said,
Let’s all say a prayer for [the President] because that’s what we do. We pray. I hear your values. I’m not ashamed of those values. I will defend those in Washington, D.C. As this great fighter faces all those odds — the push by the Democrats and the Fake media — the last thing he needs is for the 9th District to send another nasty politician. President Trump needs nobody else in Washington who supports sanctuary cities and counties here in North Carolina or anywhere else. What will happen tomorrow, September 10, is the 9th District will send a congressman with a backbone.
And that’s what the voters did. But it wasn’t racist rednecks or people who wallow in “white privilege.” They weren’t the “suits” from Mecklenburg County who voted for Dan McCready on their way to play with pivot tables in Charlotte office buildings. The voters who elected Dan Bishop to the House of Representatives are the people who actually work for a living in places like Cumberland, Richmond, and Robeson counties. They are by no means all white, and they remember all too well what it was like during the Obama years and how it felt to go hat in hand to the unemployment office. That should frighten the Democrats badly.
