North Carolina Special Elections and What They Mean for 2020 [Updated]

North Carolina, where the final votes of the 2018 midterms were finally cast on Tuesday, September 10, 2019.  An election fraud scandal led the state election board called for a new vote in the 9th District. Republican Dan Bishop, a state senator, will face off against Democrat Dan McCready, a Marine veteran, as well as the Green Party's Allen Smith and the Libertarian Party's Jeff Scott.

The headlines across the state prior to this election stated that this was an election to test the popularity of President Trump and to possibly predict the coming election in 2020. Now after the results in both the 9th District of the State and the 3rd District, it would appear, the republicans and Donald Trump still have the weight to pull North Carolina at least for now.

If this election was a predictor of 2020, then North Carolina is going to go red just like it did in 2016. Voters in both districts were ready for this election to be over. The commercials pounded both districts with negative ads about the other candidate over and over again.

2016 Electoral College Map

Even though President Trump’s national approval rating was last recorded at 38%, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairwoman Cheri Bustos acknowledged that the president contributed to Bishop's win. She wrote, “We fell an inch short tonight, but it took almost $6 million in outside Republican spending and a last-minute Trump rally.” This helped to seal Democratic candidate Dan McCready's fate in the 9th District.

To be fair and report the whole story, McCready's campaign spent approximately $4.7 million on the race, while Bishop's spent only $1.9 million. Outside spending primarily from national party committees helped Bishop to the tune of $5.8 million, though, compared to McCready's roughly $1.4 million. If the democrats had spent more would the election results had turned out different. And how much is too much to spend in a district election from outside sources? One has to wonder about that fact.

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Back to the original topic. What did the North Carolina recent election signal to us that we can expect from our national election in 2020? There are three things to watch for:

1. We should not expect for red states to go blue just because people may be disenchanted at the moment with some of President Trump’s policies. If North Carolina is truly an indicator as some predicted before the election, then it is possible the Trump rally cry will pull him over the edge in 2020.
2. We should also expect the national parties to spend an incredible amount of money on state senate and congress representative elections.
3. Expect campaigns to be negative and ruthless.

Everything will matter in the next year leading up to the election. The democrats will make a choice to nominate someone to run against the President. How this choice is made and how negatively the party behaves during the process will matter to the voters. The differences between the two final presidential candidates and how they look when they debate one on one will also matter.

Will people see themselves in better hands economically with one person at the helm over the other? Right now, part of Donald Trump’s lower rating has to do with a possible looming recession. Will we be in a recession by November of 2020, or will Donald Trump and his policies help us avoid a recession?

Are recession fears being created by the party of fear?

All these questions and many more will be asked and maybe not answered. But come November 4, 2020, we Americans and the rest of the world should know the answer to all of these questions.