Why Cheri Beasley might be Democrats' most underrated Senate candidate

Can she break Democrats’ losing streak in North Carolina?

By Nicole Narea@nicolenarea Oct 18, 2022, 6:01am EDT

DURHAM, North Carolina — Before locals packed inside Beyú Caffè in downtown Durham on a Tuesday evening in October, Rheba Heggs arrived early to save her seat. A retired attorney, she had come to see Democrat Cheri Beasley, who could become the first Black person to represent North Carolina in the US Senate.
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North Carolina hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than a decade, and most thought this year, with its tough climate for Democrats, would go the same way. But the race to replace retiring Sen. Richard Burr is actually competitive...

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North Carolina is as close to evenly split by party as any state, but no other swing state has as many unaffiliated voters. The path to winning it means attracting and turning out a sizable contingent of North Carolina’s more than 2 million voters who aren’t attached to a political party. They are neither true independents nor shadow partisans, as Christopher Cooper, director of Western Carolina University’s Public Policy Institute, and his co-authors write in a working paper examining state voter registration data.

Nearly half of these voters are Gen Z and millennials. They are more racially and ethnically diverse than Republicans but not as diverse as Democrats. In North Carolina, they are allowed to vote in any primary they choose. Cooper found that only about half of them voted in the same party’s primary in the last three presidential elections, while the others floated between the parties. That suggests that some just don’t like partisan labels while others are true swing voters.

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Much more...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23404909/beasley-budd-north-carolina-senate-midterms

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