NC Democrats made a renewed push for rural voters in this election. Did it make a difference?

Nearly two years ago, the North Carolina Democratic party changed leadership and launched a renewed focus on rural voters who have long felt overlooked.

On Election Day, Democrats won contested races for governor, attorney general, as well as state superintendent and are poised to break a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature. But this came amid low voter turnout for the party, including in more rural regions of the state.

WFDD's DJ Simmons recently spoke with The Assembly's Greensboro Editor Joe Killian, who spent Election Day with the state Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton, on rural voter turnout and the party's strategy. 

Interview Highlights

On how parties can compete for rural voters:

"I think that you're going to have to start talking about the universe of issues that your party represents, right? I think that there's been this idea for a long time that if you support a woman's right to choose, or you're anti-abortion, perhaps that is the single issue on which you will be voting. … And I think that there's just an entire universe of issues, from the economy to education, to the environment, that are important to voters everywhere, and you have to talk to them about all of it.”

On how labeling voters affects outreach efforts: 

"Labels like rural or urban, or Black voters, Latino voters, white voters, you know, also Republican and Democrat, I think sometimes just doesn't do what you need them to do in terms of telling you about that person's politics in a complete way."

On the strategy:

"This sort of strategy is worth bearing out, and there's no harm in and there might be a lot of good in trying to reach people where they are, whoever they are. Trying to sort of recenter a party and make it so that their prime concentration is not urban centers, but the rest of the state is a long-term strategy. It's not an OK, the next 200 days strategy. And I think that's worth keeping in mind."