Trump, not Tolls, caused Mecklenburg Republican electoral wipeout

The days since Tuesday's disastrous showing by Mecklenburg Republicans has already seen a lot of second guessing and finger pointing as to "why" this happened.

Here in North Mecklenburg, a lot of that has centered around the I77 tolls issue and the impact of losing MeckBOCC Commissioner Jim Puckett, Sen Jeff Tarte, and Rep John Bradford.  Some social media commentary links the toll issue and divisions in the anti-toll movement as the main cause of these losses by driving single issue voters to the Democrats.  However, after looking at the data available so far, it's more likely North Mecklenburg was just caught up in the same anti-Trump "blue wave" that swept suburbs across the nation on Tuesday.

That data answers the questions from this post during early voting that indicated such a wave might be building locally.

Before getting to the data though, one should ask this.

"Does blaming tolls and divisions in the anti-toll movement for the election outcome even make sense?"

Not really.  Did South Mecklenburg Republicans Andy Dulin and Scott Stone lose their NCGA House seats because of tolls?  No.  Moreover, they lost their seats by wider margins than John Bradford. Did Democrats sweep the MeckBOCC because of tolls?  No, that doesn't make sense either.  Yet, Republicans Matthew Ridenhour and Bill James both lost as well as Jim Puckett.

The only answer that makes sense for these other races is that energetic and well-funded anti-Trump sentiment drove higher vote totals for Democrats.  It was that sentiment, not tolls, that had a negative effect, creating a blue wave in urban/suburban areas of Charlotte that swamped these candidates.

So, what does the data tell us about the races in North Mecklenburg?

First, as pointed out in above linked post, Tarte was in trouble from the beginning due to redrawing the NC Senate 41 district to be much more Democratic than it had been previously.  Turnout of registered Democrats in North Mecklenburg was also higher in early voting meaning Tarte really had no chance to overcome this structural disadvantage on election day.  In the new district Tarte would have had to win overwhelmingly in the northern precincts to overcome the advantage Democrats have in the southern precincts.  This didn't happen and realistically probably never would, tolls being an issue or otherwise.  In a wave election scenario like the one just experienced, outside issues made this comeback even less likely.

In the race for MeckBOCC District 1, the toll issue probably helped Jim Puckett, but it was not enough to overcome the increase in Democrats heading to the polls.  Of the three North Meck Republicans who lost, Puckett was the most consistently anti-toll.  Both Bradford and Tarte had been hit in previous elections with the flipflopper label on the toll issue due to not being ardently anti-toll from the very beginning.  Jim Puckett never had that problem as he was one of the original anti-toll warriors.  The benefit he received from this showed in the election results.  Puckett won multiple precincts that Tarte and Bradford narrowly lost.  Puckett's loss rested primarily on major increases in the margin of victory for Elaine Powell in precincts that were already Democratic.  Those would be precinct 206 in Davidson and the Charlotte precincts along the district's southern edge.

As surprising as it was to see Jim Puckett lose this race it really probably shouldn't have been.  In 2014, the last time Puckett had a challenger, he only beat his challenger by roughly 4000 votes.  So, while the district had long been in Republican hands, it didn't take much momentum to close that gap.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to argue these new Democratic voters came out to vote against Puckett because of tolls.  These were "new" mid-term voters because of the "blue wave".  It should also be noted that this district did not have redistricting changes.  The precincts in it have been the same for past two elections as this one.  Puckett actually got 5000 more votes in 2018 than he did in 2014 during the last mid-term election.  That increase just got swamped by the blue wave.  So while tolls was an issue in this race, Puckett didn't lose because voters abandoned him because of it.

Finally, there is Bradford's loss in NC House 98.  aShortChronicle took a close look at this race.  In this race, redrawing the district should have actually helped John Bradford, not hurt him. A couple Republican precincts were added while Democratic precincts were removed since the 2016 election cycle.  Bradford won the previous 2 elections in the old district by wide margins, so it stands to reason he would do better in the new one.  That didn't happen. Why?

Here is what the data tells us.

• During early voting, 45% of early voters in this race did not vote at all in the last mid-term in 2014.  These "new" voters broke pretty significantly for the challenger giving Clark an 1800 vote lead when early voting was counted.  This dynamic of "new" voters for a given type of election was very similar to what happened in Davidson last year when Save Davidson brought in a lot of new voters for a municipal election.  Those voters broke heavily towards the challengers.
• If you compare the precincts in the new NC98 with how those precincts voted in the NC House election in 2016, something is very clear.  The Democrats maintained Presidential election year totals or better in these precincts while Republican totals fell off significantly.  See the chart below for that detail.

Both of these data points indicate high voter enthusiasm among Democrats and lower enthusiasm among Republicans.  That level of enthusiasm among one party to vote was not driven by tolls - a bi-partisan issue that has been around for several election cycles.  It does not seem reasonable that Democrats suddenly came out en masse to vote over this issue or that unaffiliated voters suddenly turned on Bradford and Puckett specifically because of tolls.  That's true no matter how many television ads were run on the issue.  aShortChronicle would argue if it wasn't tolls, some other issue would have gotten all that ad money.

Instead, it makes a lot more sense to say that type of enthusiasm gap was driven by anti-Trump sentiment that turned out a lot of Democrat voters.  In a race like NC98 that enthusiasm gap wiped out the big lead Republican candidates normally have in that district.  In MeckBOCC District 1 it easily overcame the smaller structural advantage Republicans have had in the past.  In NC Sen 41 it made the results a foregone conclusion.

The most you can say about the impact of tolls on these races is that the divisions in the anti-toll community probably put Clark over the top in NC98, but it wasn't the driving factor why the race was close enough for that to matter in the first place.  For that matter, the ridiculous attack ad flyers used in response to her TV ad campaign sent out by the NCGOP may have backfired and cost Bradford enough votes to cover her margin of victory.  Those flyers turned off a lot of people.  The tone of them could also be seen as an impact from Trump.  Regardless, in a race as close as that one, any number of small campaign mistakes could be seen as the deciding factor.

Trump, not tolls, caused this debacle for local Republicans, and while the party picks up the pieces and tries to regroup, the ongoing impact of national issues will likely make that more difficult.