More than 15 electoral votes

On Thursday night, President Barack Obama will be officially renominated at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

While the convention might be a three-day exercise in partisan political rhetoric, the choice to host it in North Carolina represents a bold decision to symbolically plant a flag for Democrats in the South.

The convention’s location signals that Obama is not just fighting to capture our 15 electoral votes again in 2012. Picking Charlotte is just as much about cementing the state as a contested presidential battleground in future elections.

Veteran Democratic strategist Gary Pearce said this week is ripe with historical and political significance because firstly, a Democratic president is holding his convention in the South. Secondly, he picked North Carolina. Thirdly, he’s black.

“This would have been inconceivable 20 or 30 years ago,” Pearce said. “We have come a long way.”

But key liberal constituencies were not thrilled about the state’s anti-union history or the landslide vote supporting Amendment One.

Although Obama’s razor-thin margin of victory in 2008 and the state’s sharp turn to the right in the 2010 election made another Democratic win at the presidential level look unlikely in 2012, the polls tell a different story.

While Republican opponent Mitt Romney has held a small advantage in North Carolina over Obama in most recent polls, his lead has almost always been stuck within the margin of error.

The latest survey from Public Policy Polling shows the two candidates tied at 48 percent. CNN moved North Carolina from “lean Romney” to “toss up” in its electoral map last week.

The state’s unique demographics — and its unusually strong contingency of youth and minority voters — delivered the state for Obama in 2008 and explain why Obama’s support is holding steady.

Obama has lost ground among working-class white voters since 2008, but that voting bloc is much less important in North Carolina compared to other Republican-leaning states, such as Indiana, which Obama also won four years ago.

Only 27 percent of the president’s North Carolina supporters in 2008 were white voters without a college degree, compared to 51 percent in Indiana.

That disparity illustrates why Obama is conceding Indiana while betting that support from young people, African Americans and women can put him over the top again in North Carolina.

As Pearce has pointed out, Obama can hold the upper hand by forcing Romney to fight in what has traditionally been GOP territory. For example, no Republican has gone to the White House without winning North Carolina since 1956.

Obama changed the game in North Carolina four years ago with aggressive field organizing and a barrage of TV ads to win the state with less than 15,000 votes. And Democrats aren’t willing to write 2008 off as a fluke.

Stewart Boss is a columnist for The Daily Tar Heel. He is a senior public relations and public policy major from Bethesda, Md. Contact him at sboss91@live.unc.edu.