Dan Bishop Holds on to North Carolina 9th in Hotly Contested Special Election

Many media outlets reported the North Carolina 9th as a bellwether for the 2020 presidential race and that the outcome would predict how 2020 would pan out.

The North Carolina 9th district was won in 2016 by Donald Trump by 12 points. A resounding victory. However, in this race, Dan Bishop (R) beat Dan McCready (D) by a measly 1.2 percent. So what does this mean?

The first thing we need to understand is the differences in the candidates running in the two different races. More importantly, the difference in the Democrat running in these races.

Hillary Clinton has been a lifelong politician since her husband Bill was elected president in 1992. He served two terms and as first lady Hillary Clinton was extremely active. Following Bill’s second term, Hillary ran for senate in New York and won and after her loss to former president Barrack Obama she served as secretary of state for some time.

According to his campaign website, Dan McCready is a Marine veteran, business owner and father of four children. He wants to cut taxes on the middle-class, lower the cost of prescription drugs, take on trade deals, physical border barriers, and balancing the budget.

Dan McCready is an extremely moderate Democrat who put up a tough fight against what amounts to a Trump stand-in.

If there is anything we know about the 2016 election it was designed as a middle finger to the establishment politicians in office and had it not been for the DNC and their superdelegate system we might have had Bernie Sanders running on the Democratic ticket.

Following that vein of reasoning, Democratic turnout in the district was exceptionally low. And we can see this if we look at the results of the 2018 midterm election in which incumbent Mark Harris (R) only held his seat from Dan McCready (D) by only .4 percent of the vote which is less the 1000 votes in the district.

Because this is an off-off-year special election for the House seat, the turnout was still low for this race but it did see an improvement in percentages for the Republican on the ticket, who mind-you is not an incumbent candidate.

So it would seem that this district has actually moved to the right in the past year if instead of focusing on the difference between the 2016 campaign for president in terms of turnout, we look at the turnout in the 2018 numbers. It would seem to figure that if the Democrats were to run someone near the middle on many issues and with broad appeal to both Republicans and Democrats they would stand a very good chance at beating Donald Trump in a general election.

But instead, the Democrats are pushing further left members of the party such as Elizabeth Warren to the front of the pack. Who is now the shadow leader of the Democratic primary despite Joe Biden’s narrow lead.