Candidates for various positions campaigning hard in the primary elections for various seats. Photo by WCJ.
The second primary in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District is on June 23. The two candidates in the Republican block, Madison Cawthorn and Lynda Bennett, face each other again when neither got the 30 % threshold in the primaries in March.
The significance of this primary goes beyond which Republican candidate will face Moe Davis, who won the Democratic primary in March securing 47 % of the vote.
Western Carolina’s Head of the Department of Political Science and distinguished professor, Dr. Christopher Cooper writes in his opinion piece published in the Asheville Citizen Times that it is an indicator of how campaigns are run in the time of the pandemic and about mail-in voting in November.
District 11 has been represented by Republican congressman Mark Meadows since 2012 and is currently serving as the Chief of Staff to President Trump. Despite recent redistricting that made Distrcit 11 slightly more competitive, Meadows was expected to easily get re-elected, until his quick resignation in December to attend his new post in the White House.
Dr. Christopher Cooper is political science professor and expert on NC politics. Photo by WCU.
Dr. Cooper writes that this race is noteworthy, not only because of the candidates, but also because of what it suggests about how campaigns may be run in the time of COVID-19 as well as what it says about the potential of mail-in voting. In his post in the London School of Economics US Centre blog Cooper writes that the “results of this primary will tell us a great deal not only about the future of this district, but also about the dynamics of primary politics, the importance of election rules regarding runoff elections, and the potential increase in mail-in voting that may come as a result of COVID-19. “
“North Carolina election law does not provide for true mail-in voting, but does provide for no-excuse absentee balloting, where any registered voter can request a mail-in ballot and return that ballot by Election Day. At the time of this writing, there were three times as many mail-in votes cast as there were the same number of days before the first primary. This increase in mail-in-voting over the first primary is particularly telling, as turnout in the second primary is expected to trail far behind the first primary.”
In the post on the Old North State Politics blog he goes more in depth of the data from this round of early voting and mail-in-voting stating that even though the turnout is lower than in the first primaries the mail-in-voting is up more then predicted.
“While the mail-in vote will not come close to the 40% mark that some had anticipated, it is a significant increase over mail-in voting in the first primary, and may suggest something important for how ballots will be cast in November.”
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