Governors race was a different beast than the national race... Again, for Hillary to think she could win a state Obama lost in 12 was pure delusion, then to know what the early voting breakdown was, which was known long before Tuesday, and to still think she could win was just denial.
NC was never in play, Trump took it by a larger margin than Romney, though Hillary did get 20k more overall votes that Obama in 12, she was still 80k under Romney’s 12 numbers... Let alone the fact Trump absolutely smoked Romney’s numbers in NC, getting almost 100k more than him.
NC was NEVER in play... and the race wasn’t tight. 180k and almost 3 points... Trump had it solid from day one... Hillary never stood a shot. NC was NEVER in play, just like OH and IA were NEVER in play. Lies made up to try to influence the outcome, not based on reality on the ground.
“NC was NEVER in play, just like OH and IA were NEVER in play.”
Really great point you made! Trump had never been behind in any reputable poll in all 3 states for 7-8 months. The reason the Clinton camp was so upset about NC is because they already knew 4 hours before that they had lost Florida(even though the networks refused to call it) and that the Blue Wall was crumbling. They knew the only chance they had was to win NC and New Hampshire to give her a path to 270.
The real backbreaker was Wisconsin...that took away any path she had without stealing Arizona and the 1 CD in Maine. It all turned out to be nothing because she ended up losing PA.
Clearly that was the case with 20/20 hindsight. But, living here in the "great North State", many Dems locally were smug, and expecting a Hillary win, AND a Cooper win.
I think this was borne out of 2 things: (1) they live in an echo chamber of their own making, so didn't believe the Trump movement was as large as it was; and (2) they also BELIEVED they had created or motivated enough ADDITIONAL Hillary/Cooper voters through the voter-ID issue; the HB2 issue; and the BLM movement (on top of the normal/expected absentee voter fraud).
I don't believe that any polls picked up on the true Trump surge and, even if they had Trump ahead on election day, they expected it to be much tighter than the actual vote turned out to be.
As to why Hillary went nuts when she learned she'd lost NC, I think that is a result of staff "survivor bias". That is, she only kept staff around that told her what she wanted to hear. Therefore, the long-term, loyal staff that took her to election day likely DID know she wasn't likely to win in NC, but they weren't going to tell her that. So, to her, it was totally unexpected. She had long-term staff, and at times honest staff. She didn't have any long-term honest staff.