Larry Martin grew up cropping tobacco in Robeson County, North Carolina.
“I cropped for $3 a day,” said Martin, now 70 and retired. “I worked all my life. Nobody’s ever given me anything.”
Martin said Donald J. Trump sees that in a way that Vice President Kamala Harris does not.
“He cares about this country and the well being of the working people that have worked their butts off to make it what it is,” Martin said.
“But this crowd is sitting there giving everything away,” he added, gesturing toward Harris’ Lumberton office, which sits across a parking lot from the Republican National Convention office.
Martin is one of about 117,000 people who live in Robeson County, a rural area about an hour and a half south of Raleigh. The county was a Democratic stronghold from 1976 through 2012 — including backing Former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — before voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Robeson Republicans expect to extend their win streak to three on Tuesday, when voters will decide who will be the next president.
“It’s the only sensible thing to do,” said Tony Hayes, a 70-year-old retiree, during an interview in the RNC office. “To save mankind and to be the right way, it’s the only way to do it.”
“They’ve turned it because Democrats, they cannot tell the truth,” Martin said during his interview, also at the RNC office. “Kamala’s not going to win there. If they do, it’ll be by a corrupt voting election.”
Trump has cast doubt on the election results if he loses. There is no evidence supporting his position of election fraud. He regularly makes statements regarding abortion, immigration, the economy and other policies that contradict published research and industry experts.
Kizzy Thompson, a volunteer with the nonpartisan organization Democracy North Carolina, works with her team to help maintain election integrity.
“We have different monitors and we have different people going around making sure we going,” said Thompson at a polling site next to the county’s Board of Elections building. “Some of the guidelines we know: where certain people can be, where they can stay and not to stay. And if someone do not feel comfortable, they can come to us and make an anonymous claim or statement saying, ‘Hey, this is what happened. What can we do?’”
Phillip Stephens, the chair of the Robeson County chapter of the RNC, previously worked as a Democratic operative until the 1990s, he said. He added that his team would also have monitors on the ground doing the same work as Thompson.
“I never left the Democratic Party. It left me,” Stephens said, adding that this feeling was why he thought that Robeson turned Republican after historically voting Democrat.
Stephens said that the area was home to “blue dog Democrats,” meaning they’re conservative. In the last 10 years or so, as the party has shifted left, these centrist Democrats have left the party to become unaffiliated or Republicans, he said.
James Bell, a progressive Democrat who is also a member of the Lumbee Native American tribe, disagreed. He said that Democrats have become more central during this election cycle.
Harris has been criticized by more progressive Democrats and voters for her moderate and even conservative views. Her staunch pro-Israel stance has infuriated pro-Palestinans, particularly during the Israel-Gaza war. Harris has also been grilled about her prosecutorial record and tough-on-crime stance regarding whether she sent an outsized portion of specifically Black men to jail or prison. She shocked progressives who are pro-gun control when she recently revealed that she is a gun owner.
These positions are appealing to the blue dog Democrats, said Bell, who early voted for Harris. Bell added that as the party has become more centrist under Harris, previously conservative Democrats became the right side of the party and could vote either way.
“It could go two ways: It could go very tight, 50–50, or it’s going to go blue,” said Bell, a world history teacher at his alma mater, Lumberton High School, which is down the street from the Harris and RNC campaign offices. Bell added that it was too close to call the state at this point.
Stephens said he was sure Trump would win Robeson County and North Carolina. Martin thought so, too.
“It’ll continue red,” Martin said. “They call him incompetent. The man knows what he’s doing.”
Predictions will be confirmed or denied when election results become available, which may not be on election night.
Results are delayed, Thompson said, because it takes time to count up all the ballots cast via in-person or mail-in, and provisional ballots are reviewed and accepted through Nov. 14.
Polling sites in Robeson County and North Carolina at large open on Nov. 5 at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.
