The number of top-of-the-ticket victories that have gone to Republicans can create a skewed impression of North Carolina’s politics. Republicans have won the state three straight times at the presidential level and four straight times at the Senate level. That’s depressing to Democrats, but it masks the true balance of power in the state. As Professor Michael Bitzer explained in an illuminating post, Republicans have won federal races in the state by 50.6%-47% since 2008. Democrats, on the other hand, have won state races by an average of 50.9% to 48.7%. If you look at the popular vote, the last six elections in North Carolina have essentially been a draw. This is not a state in league with the ultra-red likes of South Carolina and Mississippi.

But Democrats have still fallen short at the end of the day. Put aside the U.S. House delegation, of which electoral results are predetermined by Republican gerrymandering operatives. In the popular vote for state House, Democrats lost the 2020 election by a narrow 50.7% to 49.3%. That is still a loss. And in 2016 they lost a majority of Council of State races for the first time since Reconstruction. They failed to take any of those seats back in 2020, although it is encouraging that the Democratic incumbents held on in the face of yet another Trump surge. This is a party that has real challenges before it.

Far be it from me to instruct state Democrats in how to dig their way out of a decade-built hole, but it seems to me that there are three tasks relatively well defined and potentially doable. First, Democrats need to reboot their message. For a decade, Democrats have largely been running on issues that matter the most to Democrats. Nearly every Democrat talks about Medicaid Expansion and gerrymandering reform as the centerpiece polices of their campaign. These issues are important–but the party has been emphasizing them for a decade and they are still in the minority. Democrats need to listen more attentively to the needs of hard-pressed working class voters who want answers to their economic problems.

Second, Democrats need to reshape the electorate. As it stands, turnout patterns are strongly favoring Republicans, with more and more MAGA voters coming out to support their hero every year. The electorate as it stands is too white and too conservative for Democrats to win except in exceptional years for the party. The party needs to register hundreds of thousands of friendly voters and make the electoral map more of a fair fight. Many of these voters are people of color, many are young, some are rural, and some are urban. A party that spent $500 million on TV ads in 2020 can afford to go across the state and register voters so that they have an electorate that at least gives them a chance of winning when circumstances are not perfect.

Finally–and most difficultly–Democrats have got to start winning voters outside the urban cores. We are facing what I have called a Fortress Liberalism, where progressive citadels like Charlotte and Chapel Hill vote Democratic by ever-more-towering margins and the party has almost literally no support anywhere else (with the exception of heavily Black and Native districts on the state’s far west and far east). To be blunt, the Democratic brand is almost toxic in many rural and exurban white communities, and even rural Lumbee voters in Robeson County voted for Dan Bishop despite his explicit support for white supremacy. This is not a state like Virginia, where one major metropolitan area can serve as a viable basis for statewide Democratic wins. The party needs to become more resourceful about appealing to non-urban voters.

This list of ideas is hardly exhaustive for a party attempting to win in a diverse and politically complex state. But it’s a start, and all three challenges can be met by the party if they are able and willing to raise their game. The most difficult will be winning rural and exurban votes, but current Senate candidate Cheri Beasely did manage to run ahead of Joe Biden in rural North Carolina. North Carolina’s politics are intensely competitive, whatever cynics insist. The party of FDR can become the majority party again.