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Democrats will soon fall to third place

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Tuesday, 19 August 2025

Written by John Hood

The likely Democratic nominee for North Carolina’s Senate race next year, former Gov. Roy Cooper, led likely Republican nominee Michael Whatley by six points in the first independent poll commissioned after the two men announced their campaigns last month.
Of course he does. Cooper has been on statewide ballots for decades. Whatley, a first-time candidate who chairs the Republican National Committee, isn’t as well known.
On the other hand, Cooper’s 47% to 41% margin in the latest Emerson College poll isn’t particularly impressive. North Carolina is a closely divided state. Setting aside Josh Stein’s remarkably good fortune last year, most of our statewide races have been and will continue to be decided by small margins.
So, Cooper’s six-point edge in the poll isn’t what caught my eye. It was the partisan breakdown of the Emerson College sample: 36% Republican, 33% unaffiliated, 31% Democrat. If I got in my time machine and went back 30 years to chat with 1995 me, he’d say the sample was badly skewed and suggest I toss it aside. Democrats rank third in party affiliation, behind Republicans and independent? No way, my dark-haired, wrinkle-free doppelganger would insist.
And he’d be dead wrong.
It’s true that, with regard to voter registration, the state’s former majority party hasn’t yet fallen so far. As of last week, 30.6% of North Carolina’s 7.6 million voters were registered as Democrats. Republicans made up 30.4%. Unaffiliated voters already comprise a plurality at 38.4%.
The underlying math has an inexorable logic, however. We don’t have to go back 30 years to see it. Half that time will do it. In 2010, Democrats made up 45% of the electorate. Republicans were 32%, independents 23%. Since then, the independent category has grown by 1.5 million and the GOP by nearly 350,000, while Democratic registrations shrank by more than 450,000.
Sure, it will still take several months for the Ds to slip to third place. But the 2026 election is months away, more than a year away. By then, the streams will have crossed.
Democratic activists are right to feel trepidation about this. But Republican activists ought to restrain their glee. Despite these registration trends, GOP candidates for governor have won precisely one election in the past 30 years. Democrats currently hold half of North Carolina’s 10 statewide executive offices. Within a few years, the Republican majority on the state supreme court could disappear. In federal elections, North Carolina leans red, yes, but not by much. (I prefer a different color coding for the Tar Heel State, a reddish purple known as “flirt.”)
And, to return focus to the Senate race, Cooper starts the 2026 contest with an edge over Whatley even with Democratic registration lower than Republican registration!
That’s because unaffiliated voters aren’t necessarily, or even usually, undecided voters. Many are Democratic or Republican in all but name. In North Carolina, each party starts with a base of support north of 40%. To win, they must maximize turnout and contest the small but decisive share of swing voters truly up for grabs.
The conventional wisdom used to be that Republicans were somewhat more likely to turn out than Democrats, and thus enjoyed a structural advantage in midterm elections, when overall turnout tends to be lower.
Now the conventional wisdom is that because the rise of Donald Trump scrambled the party coalitions, with high-propensity suburban voters shifting blue and low-propensity rural voters shifting red, Republicans have lost that structural advantage. Lower overall turnout is good for Democrats, it’s posited.
I never bought the conventional wisdom in the first place, having searched for and failed to find any consistent relationship between midterm turnout and partisan outcomes in past North Carolina elections. So I’m not prepared to accept the new conventional “wisdom,” either, without more evidence.
If public sentiment turns against the party in the White House, as it often does, Roy Cooper might well win. Registration trends are hardly the only ones that matter.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Pitt Dickey asks: What could go wrong?

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Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Written by Pitt Dickey

Tired of good news? You have come to the right place. Like Creedence Clearwater, I see bad news rising. I see troubles on the way. There’s a bad moon on the rise. We have it all.
Swarms of Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Wars. Rumors of wars. Fires. Floods. Sidney Sweeney’s jeans. Nuclear reactors on the moon. Danish Zoos feeding used up pets to lions. Volcanoes waking up. Still not enough for you? How about a giant alien spacecraft heading for Earth in late November just in time for Black Friday? If you think regular human illegal aliens are bad, wait until the illegal Space Aliens arrive.
That’s right, saddle pals. Cosmic troubles are heading right at us. No less an authority than the legendary blind Bulgarian psychic Baba Vanga predicted aliens would contact the Earth in 2025.
If you don’t believe in blind Bulgarian psychics (and you should), consider Harvard Astrophysicist, the esteemed Professor Avi Loeb. Dr Loeb reports that Interstellar Object 31/ATLAS is coming for our neighborhood at the rate of 130,000 miles per hour. That’s faster than Buffalo wings disappear at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
31/ATLAS is a big boy, 15 miles across, larger than Manhattan. Even bigger than Andre the Giant. ATLAS is coming from outside the galaxy with a speed and trajectory, Dr. Loeb says indicates it could be an alien Mothership.
ATLAS will fly by Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, allowing it to send probes into each of those planets on its way to Earth. When ATLAS gets closest to the Sun (Bonus science word of the day: Perihelion), it will be on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, where it can’t be seen by our telescopes.
Dr. Loeb reports this position could be a deliberate strategy by the alien Mothership to deploy weapons or probes to either invade or zap the Earth. If you think Cartman had a bad time when he was probed by aliens, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Ever heard of the “dark forest hypothesis”? This is the theory that advanced alien civilizations are intentionally concealing their existence from Earth because we are dangerous lunatics. The dark forest may be about to rip open a giant clear-cutting of the Earth by ATLAS. If Dr. Loeb is right, instead of a boring comet, ATLAS could be a cosmic Trojan Horse. Remember the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man?
Seemingly friendly space aliens come to Earth to offer rides back to their home planet, where life is beautiful, the space girls are beautiful, and even the orchestra is beautiful. Unfortunately, their guidebook “To Serve Man” turns out to be a cookbook.
Dr. Loeb warns that if ATLAS is a Mothership, “It may come to save us or to destroy us. We better be ready for both options and determine if all interstellar objects are just rocks.” The perihelion date of 29 October is no coincidence.
It coincides with the anniversary of the collapse of the stock market on Black Tuesday 1929. If the aliens have a sick sense of humor, they may have intentionally picked that date to deploy the probes from behind the sun to attack the Earth. Like Congresspersons, the aliens may be manipulating the stock market by selling it short right before launching the probes to collapse your 401K.
Before you panic, not every astrophysicist agrees with Dr. Loeb. Some soreheads at the University of Regina in Canada contend ATLAS is just a plain old comet. But we can’t trust Canada, can we?
Those Maple Leaf Clusters are probably in league with ATLAS to hit the good old USA by scooping up all red-blooded Americans into some cosmic stew pot. The Canadians will just walk across the border to take all our stuff. The horror. The horror. Science misinformation about ATLAS gets even worse. Professor Chris Lintott of Oxford University is quoted as saying that Dr. Loeb’s theory is “nonsense on stilts,” that ATLAS is just a comet.
Other than UNC’s Bill Belichick’s relationship with the beautiful Jordon, I personally have never seen nonsense on stilts, so I am looking forward to it.
So, what’s it gonna be? A boring comet or the Mother of all Motherships? Baba Vanga and Dr. Loeb have their answer. Apply Blaise Paschal’s wager on the existence of God. Blaise said: “It is smarter to believe in God because the benefits are much greater than the losses if you are wrong.”
Watch what the Congresspersons do in late October. If they are selling stocks short, the interstellar poop is about to hit the fan.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)

Troy's Perspective: Voting demographics in Fayetteville

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Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Written by Troy Williams

In the past decade, Fayetteville has established itself as a "black-majority city," with African Americans constituting a clear majority of the population. According to 2020 U.S. Census data, approximately 42% of the city's residents are African American, while 38% are White.
Additionally, African Americans have a higher number of registered voters. Fayetteville becomes part of a growing number of 1,262 black-majority cities, which have increased by more than 100 in the last decade. What factors are driving this significant shift in population? There are various factors to consider.
For example, Black Americans have been relocating from Northern and Western cities to smaller Southern towns, reversing the trend of the Great Migration from the 20th Century.
However, none may be as striking as the phenomenon known as white flight. While the term "white flight" specifically refers to the movement of White residents from neighborhoods that are becoming more racially diverse, it is essential to recognize that middle-class Black families are also relocating in search of better housing, schools, and amenities.
The emergence of a new Black majority is bringing about a significant change in the political landscape. Fayetteville's African American mayor, Mitch Colvin, who is seeking re-election to a fifth term and is the only member of the Council elected at-large, enjoys a solid majority Black voter base. Furthermore, a significant number of African Americans believe that the mayor's office should represent and empower Black voices within the community.
It will be interesting to see how voters respond to Colvin's re-election bid, as three African American women are challenging him for the position.
The significance of the Black vote in Fayetteville is crucial and cannot be overlooked. Winning a city-wide election will be nearly impossible without securing a majority of this voter bloc.
Younger Black voters are more likely to register as unaffiliated and are less inclined to view the Democratic party as having sole ownership of the African American community. Black youth often vote at lower rates than other young people, making them less of a reliable voting bloc. The relationship between the established Black voters and newcomers is complex.
The younger generation seeks solutions to real-world issues and is less focused on racial politics. This type of diverse thinking is likely to benefit Fayetteville City Councilman Mario Benavente as he makes his first attempt at running for mayor. Benavente is young and has concentrated on issues such as fair policing and racial equity, which resonate with a younger demographic.
With a majority of Black voters, one might question the necessity of majority-minority representative districts.
They were created over forty years ago, when the majority of Fayetteville's population was white, and the political representation reflected this demographic. Will Fayetteville consider making adjustments to allow other forms of at-large representation besides the mayor, given the changing demographics of elected officeholders?

North Carolina Tax reform needs a clear goal

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Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Written by John Hood

While the North Carolina House and Senate continue to discuss how — or whether — to resolve their budget dispute and enact a new fiscal framework for the next two fiscal years, now is an excellent time for tax reformers in both chambers to spell out precisely what they hope to accomplish.
Some conservatives in the state capital and elsewhere want North Carolina to stop taxing personal income altogether. They point to the economic success of Florida, Texas, and other states that have never levied taxes on personal income. Since income taxes make up half of state revenues, how should North Carolina make up the difference? This faction advocates some combination of higher sales or excise taxes, greater local responsibility for education and other services (financed by higher property taxes), and lower state expenditures.
As I have previously argued, I don’t think it is realistic or necessary for North Carolina to abolish its personal-income tax altogether, although I strongly favor eliminating our much smaller but counterproductive tax on corporate income (it only generates about 5% of General Fund revenue, and does so rather inefficiently).
I agree that income taxes as currently structured are unfair and economically destructive. By taxing resources invested in productive capital multiple times — as personal income, as corporate income, and as dividends or capital gains received on investment principal that has already been taxed — the current system basically encourages us to eat our seed corn rather than planting it for a larger return in the future.
We should be taxing consumption, not total income. So, why don’t I favor replacing most or all of North Carolina’s income-tax revenue with sales-tax revenue? Because that’s not really going to happen, at least not with the tools available. State taxes on retail sales don’t actually apply to all consumption, to every good and service sold at retail. Large swaths of the services households purchase are not and will never be subject to sales tax. That’s borne out by decades of experience with sales-tax systems in other states.
Here’s another way to explain my point: our income-tax base is too broad, yes, but our sales-tax base is too narrow.
When households receive income, they can do one of three things with it: spend it, donate it, or save it for later (which funds investment in physical, financial, or human capital to produce future earnings for consumption or donation).
In 2023, total personal income in North Carolina was about $670 billion. Total spending on personal consumption was roughly $554 billion, of which $204 billion was spent on goods and $350 billion on services. Some of those services are, indeed, taxable. But purchases of medical care ($88 billion) and financial services ($40 billion) are mostly exempt from the sales tax, as are legal and other professional services that make up lots of spending but aren’t separately reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
On the other hand, some business-to-business purchases are subject to North Carolina tax — and they shouldn’t be! A retail sales tax should be just that, a retail tax. Otherwise, you create market distortions and, on the margin, encourage horizontal and vertical integration of business enterprises that could function more efficiently as separate entities.
If I could be persuaded that the North Carolina General Assembly will do something no other state legislature has managed to do — expand its sales tax to encompass all goods and services sold at retail — I might well embrace an end to the income tax. Given the practical and political realities of the situation, however, I favor a different strategy.
Its underlying formula is a simple one: income equals consumption plus charitable giving plus net savings. To tax consumption, then, we can start with total income, subtract charitable giving and net savings, apply a standard deduction adjusted for family size, then tax what’s left — which is, by definition, consumption.
I recognize that’s easier said than done. But it’s still more realistic than taxing hospital bills, I promise.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).