‘Just trying to survive’: How a hurricane may help decide who wins the White House

It was around 1pm on Saturday when the call came through to the Rutherford County sheriff’s office in North Carolina.

More than two weeks after Hurricane Helene ravaged the western stretch of the state, a man with an assault rifle had allegedly threatened to harm government workers helping with relief efforts in Lake Lure and Chimney Rock, two mountain towns devastated by the disaster.

In response to the 911 tip-off, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) inspectors began cancelling appointments and some workers were relocated after early reports suggested that armed militia could pose a threat to their safety.

“We the people are done playing games,” the suspect, William Jacob Parsons, had written in a social media post.

“It’s time to show who we are and what we believe. They want to screw our citizens. Now, we return the favour.”

Parsons, 44, was eventually arrested outside a grocery store that was being used as a hurricane relief site. He denies making threats against aid workers. Asked later about his intentions, Parsons told a local TV network he believed FEMA was failing to help residents in need – a lie that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had been fuelling for days.

In an election year marked by extraordinary upheaval, the aftermath of Hurricane Helene has become a political flashpoint in North Carolina, a fast-growing, racially diverse state that Trump won by only 1.3 per cent in 2020 – his narrowest margin of victory that year.

While Democrats haven’t won a presidential election here since Barack Obama in 2008, the party has traditionally come within a few percentage points of flipping it from Republicans.

This year, they believe they’re on track to finally succeed, buoyed by rapid urbanisation in left-leaning cities such as Raleigh and Durham, a surge in enthusiasm since Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the party’s 2024 presidential candidate, and signs of a backlash against Trump’s extremism and lies.

“People are excited, and they’re motivated,” says Aimy Steele, chief executive of the New North Carolina Project, whose volunteers have spent every day knocking on the doors of minority communities to ensure they show up to vote.

“They’re also cautiously optimistic – because the last time we were so happy, things didn’t quite go so well,” she adds in reference to Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat by Trump in 2016. “We can’t take anything for granted.”

What makes North Carolina such an important battleground is that it has 16 electoral college votes up for grabs, which is a fairly big haul on the path to the White House. (Candidates need 270 to become president).

But while the state has been a perennial tease for Democrats, it’s also politically volatile for Republicans.

The latest FiveThirtyEight poll, for instance, has shown that Harris and Trump have been statistically tied in North Carolina for months.

Unaffiliated voters have surged and now account for 37.8 per cent of all registered voters in the state, while Democrats represent 31.3 per cent and Republicans 29.9 per cent.

And issues such as abortion, gun violence, affordable housing and healthcare are resonating with young people and minority communities, who make up a large chunk of North Carolina’s population.

One big unknown, however, is what Hurricane Helene’s devastation will do to voter turnout.

The hardest-hit areas are in Western North Carolina, a rural part of the state that has traditionally voted for Trump, except for Asheville, a left-leaning artsy haven that is likely to skew heavily to Harris.

But when this masthead drove through the area this week, some roads remained blocked while others were barely passable. Power, water and mobile phone services were being gradually restored, and in a region where 95 people died from the storms and 89 people remain unaccounted for, politics may not be top of mind for many.

North Carolina’s board of elections passed measures last week allowing residents who may have been affected to cast their ballots at any early voting site across the state or to request an absentee ballot in person from their local centre. They also kept most polling centres open, resulting in a steady flow of people when early voting began on Thursday.

But with so many people displaced and devastated, Lightning Czabovsky, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, says the impact on the election could be substantial.

“You’re in a state that was decided by about 74,000 votes [at the last election] and 16 per cent of voters are in the counties that were declared a state of emergency or a devastated area. Sixteen per cent in any state is substantial, let alone one that is this close,” says Czabovsky, who specialises in electoral data analysis.

“These are people who are just getting their power turned back on, and even if you have power, think about the disruption to their lives over the last few weeks, is voting likely to be their top concern? For many people, they’re just trying to survive.”

The recovery is also taking place against what Biden has described as “an onslaught of lies” by Trump.

Among the claims the former president and his allies have peddled is that the Biden-Harris administration had “stolen” from FEMA’s budget to house undocumented migrants and therefore could not help victims of the storm.

Trump has also told supporters the federal government was offering only $750 in aid to citizens who lost their homes.

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A listener even called into Sirius XM’s The Dan Abrams Show last week to share how his father-in-law was refusing to get help because he’d heard a rumour that had been doing the rounds on social media: that if a person applied for disaster assistance, FEMA could confiscate their property.

Cynthia Wallace, who heads the New Rural Project, a non-partisan group that mobilises young and marginalised voters, fears the lies being peddled won’t just hamper the recovery effort.

“Misinformation could dampen folks’ interest in what the government can do for them,” she says. And that could also result in people being less inclined to take part in the election altogether.

It’s lunchtime in the affluent town of Chapel Hill, home to the University of North Carolina, the nation’s first public university.

Alexander Denza is sitting outside the Weaver Street Market, a co-op grocery store that has become a much-loved gathering place for the local community.

Four years ago, he cast his vote in favour of Biden. But like many of his peers, he has become increasingly angered by the current administration over the war in Gaza.

Asked how he plans to vote this year, Denza, who is an organiser with the gun-control advocacy group March for Our Lives, says he believes down-ballot races are where he can make the most difference on November 5.

In addition to the presidential race, voters in North Carolina will also decide on a string of other elections, including a controversial battle for governor involving the Trump-endorsed Mark Robinson, an anti-LGBTQ pro-lifer who once referred to himself as a “Black Nazi”.

But when it comes to the Harris-Trump match-up, Denza can’t support either candidate and is likely to vote for a third party.

“I mean, Harris is getting endorsed by Reagan staffers,” he says, noting the backing she has received from numerous Republicans. “She also said that she was going to put a Republican in her cabinet. Am I voting for a Democrat or Republican? It’s just gotten so absurd. At some point, you have to say ‘no’.”

Across the state, Jarvis Peguese takes a different view. Aged 50, he has returned to full-time study and is concerned about Trump enacting the policies contained in Project 2025, a 920-page wishlist produced by his allies at The Heritage Foundation, which sets out what the next Republican presidency should look like.

Among the ideas contained in the controversial blueprint is a plan to scrap the federal education department and give states the power to control all schools, as well as a push to cut the student loans Biden enacted.

“Public schools are very important,” says Peguese, who was born and raised in rural North Carolina. “We don’t have access to private schools and that type of thing here, so it’s about having an opportunity to pursue a better life.”

Whatever the case, North Carolina is likely to come down to the wire. For both candidates, the path to victory will require an intense ground game, particularly in the rural parts of the state, which account for nearly 40 per cent of the population.

To win, Harris will also need to run up votes in the urban areas to offset the growing number of Republicans who have sprung up in coastal towns.

And while Trump dominates outside the city, Hurricane Helene’s crushing aftermath has created an unpredictable element for the former president.

“What’s interesting is that you do see much heavier spending from Democrats that is more akin to their dominance in 2008, largely because the Harris campaign has so much money, and you also see the Trump campaign spending a lot of time here, too,” says Czabovsky.

“That’s an indication that both sides are not sure that they have it in the bag. Democrats might be stretching it a little more here, but flipping the state is very much in the realm of possibilities.”

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