'Razor’s edge': Experts say Helene blew wind in sails of surprising presidential candidate

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina could spell trouble for Donald Trump as officials in both crucial swing states make decisions that experts say could reshape the electorate.

“There’s going to be a lot of [voting] alterations, and it probably is going to affect turnout,” said Andy Jackson, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Civitas Center for Public Integrity, as reported by Politico.

Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference, and according to a Politico analysis, Helene has the distinction of being "the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election."

“Overall, research shows that disasters affect voter turnout,” the Politico report concludes.

That could pose a challenge for Trump, it notes, as parts of largely Republican areas in western North Carolina and eastern Georgia were flooded by the monster storm.

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The former president won 61% of the vote in the North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster after Helene, according to Politico. In Georgia’s disaster counties, Trump beat President Joe Biden with 54%.

“In a state like North Carolina where margins matter, then every little tweak to the electorate could be the tweak that makes the difference,” Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, told Politico. “It’s right on the razor’s edge between red and blue.”

A 2022 study by Kevin Morris, a voting policy scholar at the Brennan Center for Justice, found that “voter turnout fell below historical averages in the heavily Republican Panhandle counties of Florida after Hurricane Michael demolished the area in October 2018.”

Cooper said that, overall, Helene could “dramatically change who is in the electorate."