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ArcticStones's avatar

As we know, western North Carolina was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, with many communities devastated. Yesterday, State Representative Caleb Rudow (D) from Buncombe County, proposed a bill to allow hurricane victims a 5-day extension to register to vote and a 3-day grace period for mail-in ballots.

Every single Republican in North Carolina’s House voted NO.

I wonder whether this will come back to bite them in the election?

Except for Asheville, I understand that much of the hurricane-stricken region in the western part of the state is heavily Republican. I wouldn’t be surprised if people vent their anger at the Republican House representatives that are on the ballot this November.

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IggySD's avatar

Quite possibly. Good analysis here https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Oct07-4.html. A 33% reduction in votes in those areas would have cost Trump the state in 2020. With the caveat that said reduction would not occur uniformly across the entire area, I don’t think that amount of drop off is unreasonable.

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the lurking ecologist's avatar

We were up in W NC on Monday...Franklin, Sylva, Cullowee. Each of those towns was up and running. Power on, cell service, gas stations and restaurants open. I don't doubt that a lot folks are still without power, but that area is soing better than one might expect from media. We did not drive into Asheville because we had no business there, but the highway was open and downed trees were much more common from Asheville south. Forest City was still clearly without power. My point here is that the damage and aftereffects are not at all uniform, so a regional analysis of county trends is unlikely to be granular enough to be very meaningful, especially this early. My guess is the true effect in Nov will be on turnout models. Those with a low propensity to vote will be far less likely to vote. But the vast majority of folks who voted in 2020 during a pandemic and in 2022 in a midterm will still vote.

I could be wrong of course. It'll be interesting to see the data next year. I doubt we'll have detailed data analysis until then, when one of the DB folks truly digs into it. Seems like a good assignment for Steve Singiser (sp?) who, iirc, had some amazing analysis of Appalachian voting 15ish years ago.

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the lurking ecologist's avatar

Or maybe it was Jonathan Singer.

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