Opinion: Helene’s destruction in NC may swing presidential election

In 2020, Republican Donald Trump won North Carolina and its 15 Electoral College votes when fewer than 75,000 of the state’s voters picked him over Democrat Joe Biden. It was the smallest margin of any state Trump won then.
In the same election, Democrat Josh Stein held onto his position as North Carolina attorney general by fewer than 14,000 votes and Republican Paul Newby became the chief justice of the state Supreme Court by a scant 401 votes.
Electoral margins in North Carolina are small.
As I demonstrate in my book, “Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer,” North Carolina is the ultimate purple state – perched on the razor’s edge between red and blue – between Republican and Democrat. As these examples from 2020 indicate, it’s a state where small nudges and small events can tilt the electoral results in one direction or another.
Given those historically small electoral margins, it should be of little surprise that North Carolina is widely considered one of seven battleground states that will decide the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election.
That battleground status came into even sharper focus in late September when Hurricane Helene struck the western part of the state, bringing record rain, record flooding and no small amount of uncertainty.
As Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers told television station WRAL, “The last time western North Carolina experienced a flood like this was in the Book of Genesis.” 
It was indeed a biblical flood. As of Monday, at least 99 people have perished as a result of Helene, and countless more had their houses demolished, their livelihoods destroyed and their lives interrupted in countless ways.
People were homeless; residents were displaced. The election is the last thing they’re worried about.
But even if it is no longer top of mind, the election goes on – even in the wake of a natural disaster.
And in the most purple of purple states, it is only natural that people might begin to ask how the storm will affect who wins the presidency and who will gain control of the state’s levers of power in some of the most hotly contested elections in the country.
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Conventional wisdom would suggest voter turnout will be down in the counties affected by Helene. After all, even the most reliable, dedicated voter may not make it to the polls if their house is destroyed.
The same is likely true of someone displaced because of lack of potable water. Studies conducted in the wake of Hurricanes Michael in Florida and Katrina in New Orleans found evidence of a small, but significant depressing effect of natural disasters on voter turnout. It would not be surprising to see a similar effect in the case of Helene.
It’s impossible to know exactly how turnout will play out in western North Carolina, but we can find some clues, no matter how imperfect, in early voting.
The state’s county boards of elections sent out the first mail-in ballots on Sept. 20. In-person early voting began Oct. 17 and will continue through this Saturday.
From this vantage point, early voting in the state’s western region looks roughly on par with what we might expect. Registered voters in the 13 counties most affected by Helene make up 7.8% of the state’s registered voter pool. And so far they have contributed 7.7% of all the state’s votes accepted through last Thursday – a slight decrease from what I have observed in years past but certainly not a monumental shift.
Of course, at this point we are simply reading tea leaves – and tea leaves that may be giving us misleading information in ways we can (and cannot) see.
If Helene is going to decrease turnout anywhere, it is likely to be during Election Day voting – not early and mail-in voting, which have more flexibility. And we won’t know those effects until the close of polls on Tuesday.
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In terms of partisanship, the affected counties lean Republican. In the 2020 election, voters in those 13 counties cast 55% of their votes for Trump and 45% for Biden.
The only counties in the region that cast the majority of their votes for Biden in 2020 were Buncombe, home to the city of Asheville, and Watauga, which includes the town of Boone and Appalachian State University.
So, while it’s too early to know the ultimate electoral effects of Helene, it’s safe to conclude that if turnout does suffer, it will make a difference in who wins North Carolina and, ultimately, who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come January.
After all, about 600,000 registered voters live in the 13 counties most affected by Helene – and a drop of just a few percentage points could make a marginal difference in a battleground state where margins matter most.
Christopher Cooper is the Madison Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, where he also directs the Haire Institute for Public Policy.