2024 Election Odds: Will Kamala Harris or Donald Trump Win North Carolina?

With election day only 10 days away, the battle for the White House is gearing up. The Tar Heel State has been a tease for Democrats in recent years, but good polling and a nutter running for Governor for the GOP have Democrats optimistic. Will the 2024 Presidential Odds in North Carolina be correct? At DraftKings Sportsbook in Ontario, Republicans are narrow favorites to win the state.
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2024 Election Odds: To Win North Carolina Electoral College Votes
Party | Odds | Implied Probability |
Democrats | +200 | 33% |
Republican | -250 | 71% |
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook Ontario (as of October 25, 2024)
Tar Heel Tease?
North Carolina has been a tease for the Democratic Party since 2012 when Mitt Romney returned the state to Republican red. Since then, Democrats have fought for and lost the state six times for federal office, including four Senate elections and two Presidential years. 2016 and 2020 saw Democrats hope to win the state and come up short, while 2014, 2016, 2020, and 2022 saw Democrats come within a handful of points of winning Senate seats.
The polls in 2016 and 2020 both overestimated Democrats, giving the party false hope they could win. In 2022, a year when swing state Democrats mostly beat their polls, Democrats still came out short, mostly matching their polling. This state has struck at the heart of Democratic hopes for a while, all because of 2008.
That year, Democrats won in North Carolina while losing Georgia. The combination of latent Democratic strength with working-class whites and an unheard-of Black turnout operation won Obama the state, and that victory now haunts the entire party.
NC’s No Man’s Land
The problem for Democrats is that, at a fundamental level, it’s not a particularly attractive pickup opportunity. North Carolina only swung 2% from 2016 to 2020, roughly matching the nation. Unlike Georgia and Arizona, it didn’t move left in a relative sense. If you believe the trends from the last 12 years, suburban, education areas moving left, rural, socially conservative ones moving right — North Carolina is a much worse target than both those states. North Carolina is 10% whiter than Georgia, so it won’t manifest in NC if Black turnout spikes.
If those trends revert, North Carolina is a worse win opportunity than Wisconsin, where a revival in white working-class strength would guarantee a sizable victory. It’s stuck in no man’s land, a state where Democrats can get close but is incredibly hard to win.
Georgia and North Carolina are often linked – southern, Atlantic seaboard states with big Black populations – but the differences are stark. Georgia flipped because it’s Blacker than North Carolina, more of the vote comes from the state’s biggest city, and the suburbs and exurbs around that city are moving left enough. Until North Carolina Democrats unlock Forsyth-level swings in the white exurbs, the kinds of Democratic Turnout levels in the cities, and how to stem the bleeding in rural Black areas, they’ll come close.
Polling
Marist has Trump taking the lead by 2%, while SurveyUSA has Harris +1. Nate Silver’s average has Trump up 1.2%, partially due to a run of bad polls for Harris in the state in early October.
The polling suggests this is close to a tossup, especially when you consider that Emerson only has Trump up 2 and has been biased towards Republicans since 2020. There are reasons to think North Carolina polls are wrong again. Unlike many states, there’s little evidence that the polls snapped back in 2022. Of the Big 7 swing states, all seven saw Democrats beat their polls in 2022, mostly because pollsters who got 2020 wrong overcorrected. However, 2022 saw North Carolina have the smallest mass of any Big 7, suggesting the polling industry didn’t overcorrect in North Carolina.
Mark Robinson Impact
Robinson, the current Lieutenant Governor and the GOP nominee for a promotion this fall came under fire earlier this fall for posts on a porn forum. Amongst those posts included calling himself Black Hitler, saying Mein Kampf is worth reading, and graphic depictions of his affair with his sister-in-law. Robinson has no chance of winning his race, but Democrats hoped his scandals would flow up the ticket and hurt Trump.
Unfortunately for Democrats, there’s no evidence Robinson’s scandals have helped them at the top of the ticket. Their polls in North Carolina have declined since CNN published the porn forum comments. Those comments aren’t why Trump is closing strongly in North Carolina, but it’s safe to say they haven’t helped Harris.
2024 election odds North Carolina Prospects
Trump should win North Carolina. The state is too reliably red. There isn’t a state infrastructure there like in Georgia, and it’s at the bottom of Harris’ priority list. Trump should win. It won’t be a huge margin, but he’s more likely than this price.
Best of luck with the 2024 election odds!