As a reliably red state, Swing Blue Alliance (formerly known as Swing Left Greater Boston) knew that North Carolina would be challenging to flip, but the volunteers pushed hard, making Republicans struggle to hold the state. Trump even had to visit the state a half dozen times to rally the base, showing how much Democratic efforts were impacting his standing. In the end, even though Donald Trump won, Joe Biden was able to garner enough electoral college votes to win the country and the popular vote. 

More than 3,700 volunteers from Swing Blue Alliance supported North Carolina during the election. The team started in 2019 by supporting a special election in September, completing thousands of hours of volunteer work.  In 2020, the volunteers conducted more than 1.2 million volunteer actions, such as phone banking calls, letter and postcard writing, and text messages to urge local Democrats to vote. The team held hundreds of events and devoted more than 7,400 hours to the state. The volunteer team helped to drive a massive number of early voters, breaking records in the weeks leading up to election day and driving massive enthusiasm.

Voter Protection

Judith Herman and Nancy Brown led the North Carolina voter protection efforts in collaboration with the Democratic Party’s North Carolina Voter Protection Team. Along with other dedicated volunteers, they did everything from recruiting North Carolina poll observers to finding rides to the polls for voters to curing absentee and provisional ballots.

The North Carolina Voter Protection Team reported 2,100 phone bankers, 95,000 recruitment calls made, 3,200 poll observers recruited, and 435 hotline volunteers. 79% of uncured ballots were cured. Not only was this work incredibly successful in North Carolina, it has served as a model for other states doing voter protection work, including Georgia for the runoff election.

Thank you to the North Carolina team!

The volunteers from Swing Blue Alliance made more than 1.2 million phone calls to North Carolina Democratic voters and they wrote more than 36,000 postcards and letters. With hundreds of events for the state, 72 event hosts helped to coordinate the nearly 4,000 volunteers. Several super hosts even coordinated hundreds of volunteers on their own, driving many Democrats to get out the vote. 

A big thank you to the thousands of volunteers that supported North Carolina. Although we didn’t win the state, these volunteers helped to drive enthusiasm and support for the Democratic party, paving a potential way forward for future Democratic leaders in the state.