Morning Distribution for Tuesday, January 5, 2021

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Tuesday, January 5, 2021 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [Get Out The Vote Rally With Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, And Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris]( [Democrats Hope Georgia Will Become The Next Virginia, But It Could End Up Being The Next North Carolina]( By [Perry Bacon Jr.]( When [Colorado]( [North Carolina]( and [Virginia]( flipped to the Democratic side in the 2008 presidential election, it [seemed like the start]( of a long-lasting shift. A Democratic Party [increasingly synonymous]( with people of color, college graduates and urbanites appeared [destined to win]( in states with growing, [well-educated]( [racially diverse metropolises]( like Charlotte, Denver, the Raleigh-Durham area and the northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C. That’s exactly what happened in [Colorado]( and [Virginia]( which have become [reliably]( [blue]( in most statewide elections. But not North Carolina. In November 2008, Barack Obama narrowly [won North Carolina]( (by less than 1 percentage point), and [Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan]( carried the state by 8 points. But the Democrats haven’t won a U.S. Senate or presidential race there since, [going 0 for 7]( when you count the losses by Joe Biden and Senate candidate Cal Cunningham this November. With Democrats carrying [Arizona]( and [Georgia]( in the 2020 presidential election for the first time in decades, it’s worth thinking about North Carolina. Arizona and Georgia are [also seeing major demographic shifts]( — either or both states could be the next Colorado or Virginia. But even if Democrats win one or both U.S. Senate seats in Tuesday’s runoffs in Georgia, North Carolina should remain a cautionary tale for Democrats: States like Georgia that are becoming more urban, more educated and less white don’t always turn into reliable parts of Blue America. Why can’t Democrats win in North Carolina? The obvious explanation is that North Carolina’s electoral politics are still broadly [similar to the rest of the South’s](. North Carolina has a fairly large Black electorate — [around 23 percent of voters]( compared with 12 percent nationwide — that is [overwhelmingly Democratic](. But non-Hispanic white voters are still a clear majority in North Carolina, like in the [rest of the South]( and tend to be [more Republican-leaning]( than in [other]( [regions](. Hillary Clinton, for example, [lost white voters]( without a college education by far more in North Carolina and other Southern states than she did nationally in 2016. That’s in part because white voters in North Carolina and other Southern states are [more likely to be evangelical Protestants and have conservative attitudes on racial issues]( compared with white voters in other parts of the country. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Trump Has Made The Senate Races In Georgia Harder For Republicans]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.