Last week, the Clinton campaign announced via press release the opening of 18 offices across North Carolina:
“On Thursday, August 11 and Friday, August 12, Hillary for North Carolina will officially open 18 Democratic Coordinated Campaign field offices across the state to serve as hubs for local organizers and volunteers as they continued their ambitious efforts to register new voters and engage North Carolinians from every region ahead of Election Day.”
Many of these offices have been open for months. But even in Asheville and Wilmington where the offices just opened, Clinton staffers along with North Carolina Democratic Party “coordinated campaign” staffers have been focused on voter registration this summer.
Three of those 18 offices are located in Mecklenburg County, where it’s crucial Democrats win big among the county’s 674,000 registered voters.
Get all the shifts! All the VR #WhyNC #BurnTheShips pic.twitter.com/t3TJOVkVPz
— Jazz (@Jasminezjohnson) August 13, 2016
Wilmington office opening:
https://twitter.com/NickMarroletti/status/764236730249596928
NC State campus:
We're ready to register you to vote, @NCState! #teamcampus #BurnTheShips pic.twitter.com/0wKie5DvHt
— Lillie (@lilliecatlin) August 13, 2016
We’re beginning to see that focus on voter registration move numbers across the state in a big way. During the week of August 6-12, the number of newly registered voters in a number of key counties for Democrats spiked.
| County | Total | Democrat | Republican | Unaffiliated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wake | 1279 | 34% | 16% | 50% |
| Orange | 540 | 42% | 7% | 50% |
| Durham | 331 | 47% | 14% | 39% |
| Mecklenburg | 572 | 34% | 24% | 41% |
| Buncombe | 279 | 33% | 18% | 48% |
Hat tip to Gerry Cohen for those numbers.
The percentage of voters opting to register as Democrats dwarfs the number of those signing up as Republicans, with unaffiliated voters making up almost half of the registrants in those counties. As early voting approaches this fall, the Clinton and NCDP teams will shift focus to contacting these newly registered voters, persuading them to vote Democratic and making sure they turn out to vote. This early GOTV strategy can make all the difference — remember that Obama won North Carolina in 2008 by just 14,177 votes.
Both Hillary for NC and the NCDP are also aggressively staffing up for the stretch run. From looking at campaign staffer’s hashtags it appears that the Clinton campaign now has hundreds of staffers across the state, although no official number has been released.
Are you ready to #TurnNCBlue? Join our team as a fall fellow and help us win in November: https://t.co/npq4UARgw2
— Hillary for NC (@HillaryforNC) August 14, 2016
Just 65 days from now when early voting starts across North Carolina, the Clinton campaign’s GOTV plan will be kicking into high gear – we can only guess what the Trump campaign will be doing.
Aaron Sarver, a politics junkie, has held several roles for the Democratic Party. He lives in Asheville.
It would have been helpful to identify all the Clinton office locations, so people (like me) would know whether there’s one in our general area where we can volunteer–or are the 5 counties listed the only areas?