I live in Eastern NC (I was spared for the most part by the hurricane)
I want to point out that eastern NC isn't the uniformly Trump voting hellhole that some posters here have been suggesting. My county, Wayne, is the home of Rev William Barber, who is a certified progressive hero. Wilmington, the city arguably hardest hit by Florence, is a liberal enclave. For several years the sole LGBT member of our General Assembly came from there.
Here is a map of the 2016 governor's race.
If you look at the map, the blue area on the south east corner by itself, is Wilmington (one of 8 counties which voted against the ban on marriage equality). The three blue counties at the bottom of the map are Fayetteville and some neighbors. The large blue area in the north is the black majority area in the east. The dark blue counties are Durham and Orange (Durham and Chapel Hill). For the record Cooper barely won.
Eastern NC isn't a liberal haven by any means but there are many Democratic voters and some of the party leaders in our area. Both governor Hunt and governor Cooper come from eastern NC. So cut us some slack here.
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Azaleas and Dogwoods in full bloom are breathtakingly beautiful!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_North_Carolina,_2016
I was able to grab this map from wikipedia, but there are numerous other maps (NY Times, for instance) that show the differences.
The take away is that there were people willing to vote for a Democratic Governor (a white male) but not a Democratic President (a white woman).
There were a lot of factors in play in the 2016 election, not the least of which was Russian interference, low turnout, and third party candidates, but I truly believe that in this purple state of NC, there were too many voters who DID vote who couldn't bring themselves to vote for a woman, even though she was obviously the most qualified candidate.
