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The 2024 United States presidential election in North Carolina is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States elections in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia will participate. North Carolina voters will choose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of North Carolina has 16 electoral votes in the Electoral College. 

Although a Southern Bible Belt state, North Carolina has been competitive since the late 2000s – a trend primarily attributed to population growth – as the state has been narrowly decided in every presidential election by less than a 4% margin since 2008, when Barack Obama very narrowly carried the state and became the only Democratic presidential candidate to do so since Jimmy Carter of neighboring Georgia in 1976. 

However, Republicans have won every single federal statewide race in North Carolina since 2010. It flipped back into the GOP column in 2012 (the only one of the last four presidential elections where the winner won over 50% of the state’s vote) and has been narrowly won by Republican nominee Donald Trump in the past two cycles.It was the closest Republican state victory in 2012 and 2020, even as polls indicated a narrow win by Democrat Joe Biden in the latter. However, at the gubernatorial level, incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper has won both terms, and the presidential election is expected to be competitive. 

Today a purple to slightly red state, North Carolina is expected to be targeted by both parties in 2024, with major news organizations marking the state as a tossup or slightly leaning towards the Republican candidate Donald Trump. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gathered enough signatures to appear on the ballot. Incumbent president Biden was initially poised to run for re-election, but withdrew on July 21 and endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris. 

Throughout 2024, Trump won every poll in North Carolina against Biden, but his lead in the state has diminished since Harris was nominated to lead the Democratic ticket, with most polls within the margin of error in either direction.Voters must now show a voter ID at the polls and provide a copy of their ID with their mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots received after election day also will not be counted.

On September 12, 2024, the Republican National Committee sued to block the use of digital IDs, popular with students at the University of North Carolina, as a form of voter ID. The plaintiffs sought a temporary restraining order, and alleged that the digital IDs did not comply with the state’s voter identification requirements and were susceptible to fraud. On September 20, 2024, Wake County Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory rejected the request for a temporary restraining order, stating that the Republican National Committee had not “advanced any credible link between the State Board’s approval of Mobile One Cards.