Hurricane Helene could impact voter turnout in two swing states in a way that could hurt Republicans, according to a politics expert.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections this week approved emergency measures to help Helene victims vote in the election, which is less than a month away. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order after Helene to make it easier for affected residents to vote. Georgia elections officials said they’re working to ensure the infrastructure needed to conduct an election will be fully operational before the early in-person voting period begins.
Oklahoma State University politics professor Seth McKee said Thursday that Florida should go for former President Donald Trump, regardless of how Helene or Hurricane Milton dampen voter turnout there.
But Georgia and North Carolina are among just seven true swing states. And both were hit hard by Helene on the eve of election season.
Helene is likely to have more of an electoral effect in North Carolina than in Georgia, McKee said. And the impact could favor Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“These hurricanes are going to affect voter turnout,” McKee said. “I don’t see how it couldn’t.”
Voting is a low-cost, low-benefit activity, he said.
“How top of mind is casting a vote when your life is turned upside down?” McKee said. “And so, I think that is just the common denominator for so many of these people, some worse than others.”
Trump won North Carolina but lost Georgia in 2020, both with incredibly tight margins.
Helene, which made landfall in Florida, cut east into Georgia before taking a heavy toll on western North Carolina. Georgia has 159 counties, more than 50 of which have been designated for individual assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wake of Helene.
Trump performed about four percentage points better in 2020 in the Georgia counties that now carry a FEMA designation than in the rest of Georgia’s counties, according to data compiled by McKee.
North Carolina has 100 counties. Twenty-seven currently have a FEMA designation. Trump performed about nine percentage points better in 2020 in the counties that are now under a FEMA designation than in the rest of North Carolina’s counties. What’s more, the North Carolina FEMA counties are just 5% Black, compared to a statewide Black population of about 20%.
Black voters are a key Democratic constituency. Biden won a closely contested 2020 election in part by securing 92% of the Black vote.
Nearly 40% of North Carolina voters in the FEMA-designated counties were registered Republicans in 2020, compared to 30% in the non-FEMA counties and about 33% statewide. Democrats in North Carolina hold a registration advantage in the non-FEMA counties—39% Democratic, 30% Republican and 30% unaffiliated.
McKee said party preference isn’t going to change much from 2020.
So, if turnout suffers in parts of Georgia and North Carolina that were hit hardest by Helene, then that could be bad news for the GOP.
McKee’s colleague at the University of Florida, Daniel Smith, and others previously studied the impact of 2018’s Hurricane Michael on voting in Florida. That Category 5 hurricane hit the state in mid-October. Turnout was lower among those directly impacted by Michael, but early in-person voting helped to mitigate the effects, the researchers found.
“They’ll do the best they can,” McKee said of the states now trying to make voting more accessible to hurricane victims. “I don’t doubt that.”
And he said Georgia and North Carolina are both very good at election administration. But Helene’s timing—before any votes had been banked—couldn’t have been much worse, McKee said.
“If we think about a hierarchy of needs, voting isn’t very high,” he said of the hurricane victims.
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