[southernnorthcarolina]

Well, nuts. I had GHWB's and Dukakis's totals in Mecklenburg reversed. So my corrected rounded total for metro Charlotte is GHWB 298,000, and Dukakis 166,000, which agrees with your figures (or close enough for government work, anyway). And of course, with respect to your follow-up post, I of course meant Dukakis and not Clinton. I plead an EST defense with respect to both errors -- it's late here.

OK, GHWB took the Charlotte metro area by 64-36 in 1988, and W took it by 60-40 in both 2000 and 2004. So yes, some erosion. Still, I would point out 1) that GHWB's win in 1988 was a national rout, relatively speaking; 2) that NC's Edwards was on the Dem ticket in 2004; and 3) that W's absolute 2004 margin in metro Charlotte was 155,000, as opposed to Daddy Bush's 131,000 in 1988. All in all, not a bad trend.

Since it's 2 AM here, I'm gonna declare victory and bo to ged. Or something like that.

[HostileTerritory]

GHWB took 54% of the nationwide vote to GWB's 51% share. If GWB came in 4 points behind his father, it appears that the Charlotte metro area hasn't moved anywhere on the partisan scale in 16 years, even though it has changed dramatically in other ways.

[Kuksool]

Two other counties to watch are Franklin and Wake counties. The people of these counties tend to split their votes between the parties. Easley won Franklin and Wake. Whereas, Burr narrowly carried Franklin, but lost Wake.

In fact, Burr won the Breck Girl's Senate seat by using the Jesse Helms method: Woo East Carolina Yellow Dogs by painting the RATS as Ted Kennedy clones. I wonder if this method will succeed in the long run. It seems that for every East Carolina vote the NC GOP gains, they lose support in Wake. And Raleigh Metro is where the growth in North Carolina is. So while President Bush has a lock on the South, Easley has a lock on Research Triangle. This is a lock that the NC GOP must pick if they ever wish to match the successes of their GOP neighbors in GA & SC.