How did Kamala Harris perform in Mecklenburg compared to Joe Biden? It’s a mix.
Not only did Kamala Harris win the presidential vote in Mecklenburg County, she flipped 25 precincts that in 2020 voted for Donald Trump. But overall she scored fewer votes than President Joe Biden did four years ago.
Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, won 93% of the nearly 200 precincts in the county, according to preliminary estimates from the N.C. State Board of Elections.
She captured nearly all precincts within the Interstate 485 loop and flipped several precincts in the far northern and southern portions of Mecklenburg that went for Trump in 2020. Most are predominantly white neighborhoods , census data show. And most have residents with higher incomes and more education that the county as a whole.
Five precincts near Lake Norman and Huntersville switched to Harris, data show. She flipped three just south of uptown and more than a dozen others south along Providence Road and near Matthews.
But flipping those precincts failed to translate into more votes, according to a Charlotte Observer analysis.
In 2020, Biden received 378,107 votes in Mecklenburg, or about 66.7% of ballots cast. Harris took 371,871 , or 65% of the vote Tuesday, preliminary data show.
Trump, on the other hand, improved his vote count in in Mecklenburg County by about 6,000. He captured 179,211 votes in 2020 and 185,970 this year, according to preliminary data.
Tuesday's estimated vote count does not take into account provisional ballots, which are used when a voter does not present a photo ID when voting in person. But those numbers are small. In 2020, Biden gained about 600 provisional votes after they were tallied, according to the state Board of Elections.
