NC State Gubernatorial Election 2012
Lisa Sheffield
POL/215
03-10-2015
Mr. Richard Pinder NC State Gubernatorial Election 2012

In the following paper the writer will provide a brief analysis of the North Carolina State’s 2012 gubernatorial election. The North Carolina gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2012. On January 6, 2012 Beverly Perdue, a first term democrat and the first female in the history of the state North Carolina, to govern announced she would not seek a second term in office. The next day Lt. Governor Walter Dalton declared his intention to run for the governor. Therefore, the remaining candidates to run for governor were Pat McCrory, Walter Dalton, and Barbara Howe.
Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton ran on the platform “Fair Deal for Working Families”. One of his main goals was to stop sex-based wage discrimination in the workplace. He also frowned upon employers using potential employee’s credit report information when determining employment. Another subject he was very committed to was working to protect children from obscene materials on the Internet and seek tougher penalties for domestic violence perpetrators in North Carolina. Pat McCrory used education as his platform. His ideas included: budget cuts to higher education, reduce income taxes, encourage merit pay for teacher, reduce needless regulations and push for an energy strategy that included offshore and inland energy exploration for natural gas and oil. He stated if he were to be elected he would fix a broken economy and broken state government that Beverly Perdue and her predecessor Mike Easley failed to restore.
On Tuesday May 08, 2012 the polls opened and voters turned out in large numbers as expected. According to "Http://www.ncsbe.gov/ncsbe/" (2012), "Insert the quotation” (para. 3). The republican counties were 54.6% of the vote with estimated total of 2,440,707 and the democratic counties were 43.2% of the vote with estimated total of 1,931,580. The libertarian counties were 2.1% of the vote with estimated total of 94,652 and write-in’s totaled 0% with estimate total of 1,356 making the total votes 4,468,295. The Koch brothers as well as others helped North Carolina Republicans build a robust conservative infrastructure and fundraising network, leading to the GOP winning both the governor’s mansion and the state legislature in the same year for the first time since Reconstruction. The republicans were able to spend more money on campaign ads than the democrat’s and used all of their major resources which improved their voter turnout. I feel the democrats could improve their voter turnout by using some of the same techniques and strategies of the republicans to ensure a more victorious outcome. First I feel the democrats should invest in educating their voters on who is actually running and the issues they stand for. So many people become confused on the candidates issues and policy for which they stand they quickly loose interest. Also by making voting day a federal paid holiday. Often times we lose people at the polls because they do not have the time to take off from work. Lastly, I feel that making voting places more accessible within the communities would help voter turnout.

References http://www.ncsbe.gov/ncsbe/. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.ncsbe.gov/ncsbe/