EDITORIAL: The day before, we know nothing

It’s the day before the election and the polls have it at a dead heat. No one who knows anything has any idea what’s going to happen tomorrow. Count me among them.

It’s true that I have no idea who is going to win the presidential race — not nationally, not here in North Carolina. I don’t know how the Electoral College will break down except to venture a guess that there will be more than a few surprises as “safe” red states flirt with blue and some Democrat strongholds struggle to maintain their edge.

In NC, more than half of our electorate voted before Election Day — but the numbers are so close, with totals between Democrats, Republican and unaffiliated voters nearly even. Women outvoted men by 10 percent, which should tell us something, but I’m not sure it does. Almost half the registered voters are still out there. In 2020, 75 percent of eligible North Carolinians voted; in 2016 it was almost 69 percent. Does that mean high turnout favors Democrats? Maybe not. 

In 2016 in NC, registered Democrat voters were in the majority by almost 700,000. Now, eight years later, they still outnumber registered Republicans by 100,000 or so, but both parties are dwarfed by unaffiliated voters, the largest bloc in the state at nearly 3 million voters. In line with the statistics, about half of them have already voted. No one knows how. 

In Iowa pollsters say that independent voters, particularly women, are breaking for Vice President Harris. In Virginia, according to the right-leaning NY Post, independent voters are going for former President Donald Trump. Only one of those states is a swing state, and it’s not Iowa.

Poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight has Virginia as Harris +5. But they also have Iowa going for Trump by as many as 8 points, in direct contradiction to the recent Iowa poll. Following the polling this season is as futile as a dog chasing its tail: Even when we catch it, we don’t know what to do with it.

Even after following all the campaigns closely for a couple of years now, I’m not comfortable making any predictions in this one, except perhaps one. I’m pretty sure Attorney General Josh Stein will defeat Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson in the gubernatorial race, based on fundraising efforts — Stein raised more than double what Robinson did — and recent media coverage that paints Robinson as an online perv, as well as the fact that his whole staff resigned after the reports surfaced.

But everything else is up in the air: council of state, NC Supreme Court Judge, Guilford and Forsyth county commissions and school boards… all of it. The only good thing is that most of these races will be settled before midnight on Tuesday. But the presidential contest, even just the NC totals, could take days, weeks or even months to sort out. 

Either way, election season is not over after the votes get counted tomorrow. Not by a longshot.