There’s something tedious about covering politics in the Tar Heel State. As with Florida and Nevada over the last few cycles, it always feels close – but never quite manages to flip. North Carolina has burned Democrats for nearly 15 years, ever since Barack Obama carried it in the 2008 election. After Democrats had their stunning reversal of fortunes in Georgia, a common refrain questioned whether Georgia would be like Virginia and steadily move into a safe Democratic state, or like North Carolina – teasing Democrats once with a win and fooling them once, then twice, then seven times after that.

Weighing on this decade in North Carolina political history is that it really hasn’t moved. Unlike swing states like Arizona or even seemingly Florida, individual candidates and their character seem to have little to do with the outcome. After winning North Carolina by less than one percent in 2008, Obama lost it by 2% to Mitt Romney four years later, Hillary Clinton lost it by about 3.5% four years after that, and Joe Biden lost it by nearly 1.5% in 2020. This makes it kind of an inverse Nevada: narrowly going for Republicans every four years and in most Senate races, but just narrowly enough for the other party that Democrats feel they have a chance next cycle. It didn’t matter if Democrats nominated a Black incumbent president, a woman, or a mundane white man – nor did it matter if Republicans nominated a Mormon businessman or a reality television star, North Carolina’s final margin was always a bit more Republican than the national popular vote.

In 2022, we expect this pattern to continue. Unlike in many of the high profile Senate races this cycle, candidates will matter very little, and with a national environment that favors Republicans (or at least does not demonstrably favor Democrats), North Carolina will probably go for the Republican candidate by about 5%. The likely victor, Republican Ted Budd – who represents the 13th Congressional District of the state – is a Trump endorsee and is poised to take retiring Republican Richard Burr’s Senate seat. Burr, who voted to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial, announced back in 2016 that he would not seek a fourth term, making the North Carolina race a well-foreseen opening for ambitious Democrats. But, though Democrats found a compelling candidate in former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, history stands against Democrats. Beasley and Budd are neck and neck in polls but, then again, so were Biden and Trump in North Carolina in 2020, and the Democratic nominee for Senate against the Republican that same cycle.

The fact of the matter is that Democrats “haven’t really gained ground in North Carolina in 12 years,” as FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr. put it in early 2021. This isn’t because Democrats didn’t make serious inroads with certain groups, like college-educated white voters, but because they did so while hemorrhaging red voters. “As Blue North Carolina got bluer, Red North Carolina got redder,” noted the same piece. This also doesn’t mean North Carolian could not eventually begin to lean Democratic in the way a state like Wisconsin has eventually begun to lean Republican. But North Carolina is a large state, the 9th largest in the country, and that makes it more difficult for electoral change to happen overnight or even over a decade. The fact that it is demographically more similar to South Carolina or Kentucky than it is to Georgia or Virginia exemplifies the lift Democrats need to start reliably competing in the Tar Heel State: there are entrenched Democrats that routinely provide a close margin, but not enough that they can push the party over the top in most nationalized elections. This means Beasley has a slim chance, but not a great one; it also means she’d have a better chance in ten years, and would probably even be favored. Just not this time.

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