JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Now to Granville County in North Carolina, a state that Democrats and Republicans see as key to their electoral prospects this year. Granville went for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then swung right for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Rusty Jacobs of member station WUNC visited Granville County to talk with this year's voters.
SUMMERS: Now to Granville County in North Carolina, a state that Democrats and Republicans see as key to their electoral prospects this year. Granville went for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then swung right for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Rusty Jacobs of member station WUNC visited Granville County to talk with this year's voters.
RUSTY JACOBS, BYLINE: Oxford's downtown has a subtle, if time-worn charm - quiet, shop-lined streets, an old movie theater with a once grand marquee. But The Orpheum doesn't show films anymore. It's a wedding and event space. There's no real hustle or bustle downtown, but the foot traffic outside the post office on Main Street is fairly steady. That's where I find 71-year-old Billy Squires, a long-time Granville County resident and retired salesman.
BILLY SQUIRES: I have a part-time job at the bakery right down the street, at Strong Arm, which I highly recommend, and tell them we sent you.
JACOBS: Squires is a registered Democrat, one of Granville's more than 40,000 registered voters. When it comes to politics, he says he's tired of what he called the divisiveness, craziness and lies that he blames mostly on Republicans and former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee.
SQUIRES: All politicians lie. It's in their DNA. I think the Republicans have taken the lead in lying and untruthfulness and manipulation of facts.
JACOBS: I also caught up with Susan Bryant outside the post office as the 69-year-old registered Democrat ran errands. Bryant says she believes protecting reproductive rights will motivate voters.
SUSAN BRYANT: Especially women, who are going to choose a Democrat slate based on that one issue alone.
JACOBS: Granville County sits along the border with Virginia, in the north central part of North Carolina. It's a lot less populous than its more urban, solidly left-leaning neighbors to the south and southwest, Wake and Durham Counties. Registered Democrats make up the biggest bloc of voters, at more than 15,000, then comes unaffiliated voters, followed by Republicans. At a strip mall in Creedmoor, a small city about 15 miles south from Oxford, I meet 81-year-old Bobby Autrey, pushing his grocery cart out of the Food Lion. Autrey says inflation is top of mind for him this year.
BOBBY AUTREY: That'd be the number one thing I would think on that. People got to eat.
JACOBS: Autrey's wife, Cathy, says even though they're registered Democrats, they haven't voted for candidates of that party in years.
CATHY AUTREY: They don't listen. They don't do what you need done, so we go Republican.
JACOBS: And they plan to do so again this year. A few doors down from the Food Lion, 19-year-old Michael Vacher is coming out of Creedmoor's post office, where he'd come to pick up a federal stamp required to hunt waterfowl. Sporting a ball cap with a duck logo on it and an Atlanta Braves T-shirt, Vacher says a vote for Trump is a vote for solving problems abroad.
MICHAEL VACHER: I mean, Israel's in a fight right now, Ukraine and Russia are in a fight right now. I just think he would, like, stop all of that. Him being that intimidating person, I think would stop it.
JACOBS: Over by the Food Lion, like Michael Vacher, the young Republican, college freshman Julian Hyatt says he'll be voting in his first presidential election this year. Granville County has a sizeable Black voter population, larger in proportion than it is statewide. Hyatt is one of those voters, a registered Democrat. He says he's still deciding who to back.
JULIAN HYATT: I would like to do more research on Kamala Harris, just 'cause she did kind of just float into the race as a candidate.
JACOBS: Hyatt, and other undecided voters like him, will have a chance to learn more about Harris and Trump at tomorrow's presidential debate. For NPR News, I'm Rusty Jacobs in Granville County, N.C.
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