Dems: Pay Attention to North Carolina

Nate Silver crunches the numbers about American politics and elections. Back in December 2015, his website, 538.com, published a nifty piece with an interactive map.  It allows the viewer to shift demographics in five groups to see how the shifts would affect the outcome of the 2016 election. Based on the 2012 election, the map shows baselines for the following segments of the U.S. electorate:

• College-educated whites
• Non-college educated whites
• Blacks
• Hispanics
• Asians and others

After fiddling with the map for a bit, I was pleased to see that what I have suspected for some time is true, at least based on Nate's stats.  The country is primarily democratic and only gerrymandering and low voter turnouts have gotten us into our current mess. Although this is certainly an over-simplification, consider these nuggets gleaned from the map:

• If just a few more college-educated white voters -- maybe a couple of percentage points -- voted for democrats, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona could be in play and shift to the blue column. An increase in turnout, unless it was huge, would not affect the  outcome very much, since this demographic already casts the largest percentage of votes. 
• If just a few more whites without college educations voted for Dems, then the same states would be in play for the democrats -- North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. However, if more of this demographic voted as they had in the past, that would put Florida in play for the republicans. 
• If more blacks voted, that would put North Carolina in play for the Dems. Since very few blacks vote republican, an increase in the number of democratic votes cast by this group would not change things much. 
• If more Hispanics voted, that would put North Carolina more solidly in the democratic camp. And if more of them voted democratic, that would put Arizona in play.  And if a lot more Hispanics voted, that could put Texas in play.  Wow!
• If more Asians and other ethnic groups voted democratic, North Carolina would shift into democratic territory. However, an increase in the overall number of votes cast by Asian-Americans and others would not affect the outcome significantly.

The moral of this story is this:  Democrats need to focus on -- you guessed it -- North Carolina. Barbecue, anyone?