Community Types

It's kind of ironic that the Republicans nominated urban Pat McCrory against small town Bev Perdue for Governor last year, because each party's primary electorate is more geared toward the opposite outcome.

One of our final pre-election polls last fall found that only 39% of Republican voters described the places they live as urban or suburban. 61% described their homes as 'rural' or 'small towns.'

For Democrats it was a much more even distribution, with 50% describing themselves as urban or suburban and 50% identifying their communites as rural or small towns.

On both sides the distribution is still equal enough that logically a candidate from any part of the state or type of community could win a primary election. That's a different story from Virginia where 70% of the Democratic electorate is urban or suburban, making it tougher by the year for a rural candidate to identify with the majority of voters in their party.

I do think Kay Hagan is probably more the candidate of the future for Democrats in North Carolina than Bev Perdue, but that doesn't mean folks who aren't from the fastest growing areas of the state are likely to get shut out, at least in the near future.