NC is falling apart since the death of watchdog Jesse Helms; I think the state is forever lost.
It has been a victim of its own success in so many ways -- flocks of Yankees wanting to live in its mild climate and work in the Research Triangle or along its Atlantic coastline in the East or Blue Ridge mountains in the West. It is also one of the states with one of the largest influxes of illegal immigrants, who have come there to work its farm crops. There are several large universities that have devolved into Marxist/PC/gay strongholds (Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill among the worst. The influx of several other large foreign communities, like the Hmong around Greensboro, is breaking the back of the traditional culture that made NC so welcoming in the first place. And when a culture gets destabilized by radically rapid change, tyranny rushes in -- so let's not count on NC ever solidifying as a Red State. I read somewhere that native-born North Carolinians are in the minority now.