The largest group of registered voters in NC is Unaffiliated voters. In a primary election, Unaffiliated voters can choose a Republican ballot or a Democratic ballot. Of course, in the general election Unaffiliated voters are free to vote for anyone on the ballot.
The current NC 11 is not as red as it was in 2020, but it is still an R+ 9 or 10. As I’ve said repeatedly, the rapidly evolving demographics — with the Blue Bubble growing and the dark red areas stagnant or losing population — will eventually flip this district to blue … but we’re not there yet.
In my estimation, the best shot to “Fire Madison Cawthorn” after his freshman term (as was the case with his freshman year of college) is in the Republican primary. In 2020 — which was a presidential election year where the turnout is always higher — 90,696 votes were cast in the NC 11 Republican primary. Cawthorn finished second with 18,481 votes. That was 1,016 more votes than Jim Davis received, and it allowed the Traitor Tot to request a runoff and you know the rest of the story. So, had there been just 1,017 more votes cast for
Jim Davis if you said the name Madison Cawthorn today people would say “who?” instead of “why?” or "WTF?"
As I said, in the 2020 NC 11 Republican primary, about 91,000 votes were cast. In the most recent off-year primary in 2018, there were just 41,304 votes cast. For the sake of argument, let’s say this year the total comes in somewhere in between … so that’s about 66,000 votes. In order to avoid a runoff, a candidate must get at least 30% of the votes, so in this hypothetical that would take roughly 19,800 votes.
There are more than a half-dozen candidates on the Republican ballot. Right now, Cawthorn and Chuck Edwards are the front runners. So, who is in third place and how many votes will it take to bump Cawthorn into third or to keep him below 30 percent and force him into a runoff?
Stay tuned and we will discuss this more as the campaign season progresses. But for now, the deadline to change registration to Unaffiliated is April 22. For Democrats who are serious about term limiting Cawthorn to one term, this is the best and most realistic opportunity to do it where a few thousand strategically cast votes can make a big difference. And remember … it’s always a good day to fire (or indict) Madison Cawthorn.