OXFORD, N.C. (AP) — She answers the door in a gray tank top, Hello Kitty pajama pants and pink fuzzy slippers. Her 6-year-old son stands quietly beside her, and she listens patiently as Liz Purvis begins to talk about what’s at stake in November’s election.
The woman, Cynthia, tells Purvis she doesn’t watch the news or know who the president is. When Purvis, the 31-year-old Democratic Party chairwoman in Granville County, North Carolina, tells her that a White House rematch is coming between Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Cynthia laughs and curses.
That’s the state of the 2024 election from the grassroots. In this rural county in one of the states expected to decide the presidency, party activists’ practical efforts to generate voter enthusiasm are sometimes met with indifference and even revulsion from people who could be in a position to play an outsized role in determining the nation’s course.
Voters in North Carolina are also deciding a groundbreaking and hotly contested gubernatorial election. Democrat Josh Stein would be the state’s first Jewish governor, while Republican Mark Robinson would be the state’s first black chief executive. Robinson, whom Trump enthusiastically promotes as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” has a history of controversial public statements that critics view as homophobic or anti-Semitic. He has vigorously defended his past comments.
Currently, Cynthia and many others are not paying much attention to the elections at all.
“Generally more hopeful”
In an April survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, about four in 10 Americans said they were not following news about the candidates in the presidential election or were not following it very often. And many Americans find the election already exhausting, even when they are not tuned in. About six in 10 American adults surveyed said they were exhausted by the constant coverage of the campaign and candidates.
Purvis, who was recently on a vote-cancelling trip accompanied by an Associated Press reporter, was near downtown Oxford, the county seat of a county of about 62,000 people between Raleigh and the Virginia border. She had knocked on five doors without receiving an answer until she arrived at the home of Cynthia, who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons.
By the end of a sweltering, windless Saturday, Granville County Democrats had knocked on 320 doors as part of their Memorial Day weekend campaign, the most by a county Democratic party in the state that day.
As of June 7, Democrats in North Carolina had spent nearly four times as much on advertising as Republicans, according to data from AdImpact, and they have reserved far more time slots for their campaign through November. They also appear to have devoted more resources to grassroots efforts like door-to-door canvassing.
That leaves party activists like Purvis confident about a state where Trump twice prevailed, even as his lead shrank between 2016 and 2020. The Biden team clearly sees an opportunity here, and the president has already made three trips to the Tar Heel State this year.
“I’m more hopeful for North Carolina in general than I have been in years past,” Purvis said. “I think Granville County has great potential to be a part of that.”
Both presidential campaigns focus on rural voters, and North Carolina has the second-highest rural population after Texas. In 2020, only 14 rural counties in North Carolina voted for Biden; the state’s 64 others supported Trump. Nearly 53% of the vote in Granville County went to Trump, slightly more than in 2016. Democrat Barack Obama won the county in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
Only six North Carolina counties switched from Obama to Trump.
Granville County is on the outskirts of Raleigh and Durham. Some residents commute to work in North Carolina’s bustling Triangle region on Interstate 85 or two-lane roads that wind through the countryside. Granville has five communities and manufacturing plants for Revlon, Bridgestone and others.
As the vote continues, county voters could lend a hand decide whether Republicans can retain their second-largest majority in the state legislature.
“Is this a back-and-forth, or did we just happen to catch it at the moment when it was already going Republican? We don’t know yet, do we?” said Chris Cooper, a professor of political science at Western Carolina University. “We’ll find out after November.”
Cooper isn’t sure Biden will win in those areas, but he believes the margins matter because they will determine what Biden needs in the state’s urban areas, which tend to favor Democrats.
“It’s not realistic to think that Democrats are going to win in rural North Carolina. They’re not going to win, they’re going to lose,” Cooper said. “The question is: How big will their loss be?”
Challenges for Democrats in North Carolina
Rural voters are an critical part of Biden’s campaign in North Carolina, according to Dory MacMillan, North Carolina’s communications director. The president is promoting the administration’s infrastructure and rural health care efforts, including an investment of more than $9 billion from the federal infrastructure bill.
Still, rural North Carolina presents Democrats with unique political challenges, as registered voters are withering in places like Granville. Most of the rural North Carolina counties that Trump won in 2016 saw margins escalate in 2020.
Added to this are the unpredictable implications of Trump’s historic conviction in his New York hush money trial last month.
Republicans in North Carolina expect the ruling to drive conservative voters to the polls. Both the state party and Trump’s campaign team called the trial a “farce.” National campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said it would not stop the former president from “boosting voter enthusiasm in swing states.”
State Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons said Democrats have “really failed rural communities.” Republicans plan to employ counties’ existing infrastructure to reach out to rural voters before the election and recruit more volunteers, he said.
State Rep. Frank Sossamon, a longtime pastor and the county’s incumbent Republican, is relying on the trust he has built in the community to see him through his term. His campaign has not yet fully gotten underway, although he has reminded voters that he is seeking re-election.
“What I did before and what I will do now will be grassroots work,” Sossamon said. “I will reach out to people. I will look them in the eye. I will make them aware of what I have done.”
Personal contact is paramount
In a “rebuilding year” for the state’s Democrats, the party’s 26-year-old chairman, Anderson Clayton, said the rural speaking tour, which began in Pasquotank County on April 22, was part of a major effort to connect with voters. A smaller, two-day tour took Biden’s campaign team to rural eastern North Carolina to speak with black community leaders and open two offices.
Baba Kerr, a 64-year-old math teacher, said Democrats need to “step it up a gear” to match the energy he saw in the black community when Obama ran for president. Personal connections with Granville’s black community – about 31% of the county’s population – will be crucial.
“We can’t just sit back and think that everything will happen automatically,” said Kerr, who is black himself. “We have to talk to people and get them to the polls.”
The battle for votes in Granville County has now reached the doorstep of 85-year-old Mary Wright in Oxford, where both parties met. Wright said she has never turned down a party vote but will not vote for Trump – a decision she made in 2016 after the former president’s “Access Hollywood” video was leaked in which he boasted about sexually harassing women.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic restricted in-person participation, door-to-door canvassing was more hard, but this time Democrats are making it a priority.
Ellen Hammond, a 40-year-old Butner resident, was one of about 15 people knocking on doors in Granville County. It was her first time door-to-door campaigning, but she plans to do it again. She said the political divide has made people less inclined to talk to their neighbors.
“It’s scary, but it’s also invigorating at the same time, especially when the interactions are so positive,” Hammond said.
By interacting with the residents, you also learn what is critical to them. In Cynthia’s case, it is her children.
As she watches her son – who interrupted the 10-minute conversation with Purvis to ride his scooter – Cynthia talks about her concerns about bullying and overcrowded classrooms in public schools. After a few minutes of genial banter, Purvis invites Cynthia to the next district party meeting.
She smiles and nods, but makes no commitment.
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Associated Press chief elections analyst Chad Day, polling editor Amelia Thomson DeVeaux and pollster Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
