Donald Trump isn’t taking any chances in battleground North Carolina, where he will make four appearances in two days, on Tuesday and Monday.
The polls here are close. More than that, the former president’s advisers are well aware that some of the state’s counties most severely impacted by Hurricane Helene floods are fiercely conservative.
He needs voters to turn out in those counties to win again.
According to state election data, Trump won 23 of the 25 counties in North Carolina that were included in the federal disaster declaration for 2020.
While Trump continues to make misleading claims about the administration’s response to the storm, there has been a significant movement in one area in particular: early voting.
After years of ranting against mail-in and early voting, he is suddenly urging people to vote as early as possible.
Signs at his event Monday night urged citizens to schedule their trips to the polls in advance.
Both Democrats and Republicans are pleased about the state’s excellent early voting figures.
And we witnessed why as we drove across the state: massive lines stretched outside polling places, with Democrats and Republicans lined up one after the other, eager to vote.
We met voter Roger Mills in Charlotte. He told us that he doesn’t agree with anything Donald Trump says, but he will still vote for him.
“I don’t like the direction the country is going right now. I am one of those who believes we are going in the wrong direction. So I thought, okay, I enjoyed it from 2016 to 2020, with the exception of the pandemic. So I said I’d like to get back to it,” Mills explained.
He described the former president as “abrasive.”
“He talks without thinking sometimes, but I like his policies — his policies, I believe are good for America,” he added. He said, “[Harris] flip-flopped so many times I can’t tell where she stands.”
Angela Larry was also present at the polling location. She was eager to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m thrilled! I used to wait until Election Day to be a part of the process, but now I am,” she remarked after voting early. As a mother, she informed us that she supports Harris because of her position on reproductive rights.
“We have a choice.” Our bodies. We are female. We need to make decisions. “I don’t like it when someone who doesn’t know what women go through has something to say about it,” she remarked.
Angela Larry, like many of the people we’ve encountered, is ready for it to be finished.
“I just want everything to be over with. “I am ready for it to be over.”