CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Brooke Richardson walked out of an early voting site in Rocky Mount on Wednesday evening excited at the prospect of making history.

The chance to help elect the first female president was emotional, she said, but she wasn’t confident the rest of her county will vote the same way.

Richardson, 36, is a resident of Nash County, the only North Carolina county to elect the winning president three times in a row: Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. Richardson and the many Nash County residents, politicians and political volunteers who spoke to The Charlotte Observer have no idea which way the county will swing this year.

“We have some rural areas that I think are going to be more Republican, and then I think more inner-city areas are going to be more Democratic,” she said. “But I really think it’s like 50-50. I couldn’t pick one if I had to.”

Nash is the exact shade of purple political scientists are thinking about when they describe a swing state, according to Jarrod Kelly, a politics professor at North Carolina Wesleyan University in Nash County. Both Trump and Biden won the county by around 100 votes in 2016 and 2020, respectively. The county is largely rural, Republican communities with most Democratic voting power situated in just one city, Rocky Mount, Kelly said.

“It’s just extraordinarily close. When it comes down to a couple hundred, there could be a car accident and traffic near a polling place and that might be enough to swing the election,” he said. “Any one little thing could kind of move it the other direction.”

‘The skin of his teeth’

Biden won Nash County in 2020 “by the skin of his teeth,” Mary Helen Pelt, the vice chair of the Nash County Republican Party said at a Trump rally held Wednesday in Rocky Mount, which straddles Nash and Edgecombe counties. This year, she expects Trump’s policies on immigration and the economy to resonate with voters in the county.

“The environment and the energy right now is absolutely special,” Pelt said. “Everything has skyrocketed. We need a change, and we’ll get that with Trump.”

Pelt expects unaffiliated voters to play a large role in the way the election goes. And there are 22,766 of them in Nash County, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections. Nash County currently has 27,345 registered Democrats and 19,994 registered Republicans.

Jacquelyn Griffin, 27-year-old Trump supporter, said she hopes Trump wins Nash County, but it could go either way. Although people may dislike Trump’s personality, she said many Nash County residents can reach common ground when it comes to his economic policies.

“This is a very mixed area to be in, but I have found that if you can get people down, and break people down to the point where they’re just willing to have a conversation, we agree on a lot of things,” Griffin said. “Just getting people to realize that and coming to that common ground is so big for us.”

Faith leads NC voters to candidates

Deborah Battle, a volunteer for the Nash County Democratic Party, said there’s a church on almost every corner in Rocky Mount.

“If you haven’t figured it out by now, you’re right in the heart of the Bible belt, rural, eastern North Carolina,” Battle said outside of an early voting site in Rocky Mount.

Religion is a main factor influencing people’s political beliefs in Nash County, Battle said. Her mission alongside her Baptist preacher husband is to get disenfranchised groups to the polls.

“Voting is biblical and so is being involved with civic activities,” Battle said. “We’re trying to get it locked into our constituents’ heads, especially with our young people, this is your civic duty and you need to do this.”

She said the enthusiasm behind Harris this election reminds her of when Obama first ran for president and became the first and — so far — only Democrat to win North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

“I see a momentum equivalent to what we had with President Barack Obama. That momentum is here and people are excited,” Battle said. “It feels like 2008 again.”

Jackie Phillips, 72, cast her Nash County ballot for Harris because of her faith, she said. Though she doesn’t personally support abortion, she said it should be allowed in some cases. More importantly, she said, a candidate needs to have good values and character.

“With this election, what is it about? Is it about the person or is it about the people? It’s really important. Like the Bible says, ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,’” Phillips said, quoting Matthew 12:34. “I got to weigh all the issues… and then I make my vote”

Inez Dudley, a 74-year-old Rocky Mount resident, said she supports Trump because of her Christian faith. It’s important to her to have a president that “endorses Jesus.”

“Every last policy that he’s ever put out there, I support them, but especially the policies where he stands with Christians and Christian values,” Dudley said. “The values of a Christian is what this nation is lacking, and because he really believes that God is the source of our nation’s stability.”

Getting along in a divided county

“We never argue. Rarely do we vote along party lines. It’s more about the issue at hand,” said Robbie Davis, the Republican chair of the Nash County Commission. “When you have a county as divided as Nash County is, it’s not a yes or no, it’s some needs for some classes of people, other needs for other classes of people. But yet, at the end of the day, you got to serve all your people.”

The main political divide between people, he said, is between rural, agricultural communities and the more populated city communities. But despite the battleground nature of the county, Davis said it’s his top priority to work with people across the aisle.

Fred Jordan, a 52-year-old volunteer for the Nash County Democratic Party said it’s important to him people respect each other, regardless of their political ideologies or other social and cultural factors including race.

“How are you going to make America great if you don’t come together?” he said at an early voting site in Rocky Mount. “We all bleed the same way.”

Across the parking lot from Jordan, Caroline Lewis handed out sample ballots for the Nash County Republican Party. It’s important Nash County residents and North Carolinians get along with each other regardless of political beliefs, she said. Seeing people band together after Hurricane Helene was an example of people across the political spectrum coming together, she said.

“He gave me his phone number so I can go get some sweet potato jacks from him,” Lewis said, gesturing to Jordan. “I’m looking forward to those things so hard, oh my goodness.”

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