Gov. Gretchen Whitmer trekked to North Carolina on Monday to stump for President Joe Biden, who continues to trail former President Donald Trump in the Old North State by double digits.

Tens came out to Dish in Charlotte to hear Whitmer’s blueprint for turning North Carolina blue as part of a breakfast event sponsored by the Democratic Women of Mecklenburg County, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Biden’s campaign co-chair focused largely on how Michigan Democrats secured a government trifecta in 2022 for the first time in four decades, and lessons their counterparts in North Carolina can leverage in 2024.

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“I’m inspired by what I see here in North Carolina,” Whitmer told the small crowd, which included several Democratic state lawmakers. “It looks very familiar to what I see at home in Michigan. And I know, I can tell you, I can testify: We can win.”

While the shift to Democratic control in Michigan stemmed in large part from a petition-initiated ballot referendum to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, which enabled Democrats to pull in massive fundraising, North Carolina does not have a similar process.

Only the state’s General Assembly can vote to refer constitutional amendments for the ballot, and Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers. And unlike Michigan, Republican presidential candidates have won the state in every election since 2008, though Trump won by a mere 36,712 votes in 2020.

“Coming from a fellow swing state, I recognize how important the state of North Carolina is,” Whitmer said. “I recognize how slim the margins are, how hot the rhetoric is and how high the consequences are in this upcoming election.”

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Trump currently leads Biden by 7% in an average of polls dating back to March 1, according to 538.

The latest poll in North Carolina involving 600 likely voters surveyed by North Star Opinion Research last week shows Trump with a 12-point lead when third party candidates are on the ballot. Trump has also led every poll since mid-February, and all but two in 2024.

Changing that dynamic, Whitmer said, will require Democrats to organize and campaign across the state, going door-to-door in both Democratic and Republican strongholds, according to the Observer.

“Hardworking people who are trying to get ahead … are so busy that we can’t make any assumptions that everyone can, you know, take in all the information around how high stakes this election is,” she said.

“We didn’t write off any part of the state because we didn’t write off a single voter, even in the reddest counties,” Whitmer said of Michigan Democrats’ effort in 2022. “We still showed up.”

Whitmer’s visit to North Carolina is only the latest in her efforts to replicate Michigan Democrats’ political strategy in other states. In April, Whitmer attempted to sell the same strategy to a tiny group of supporters at a Phoenix coffee shop, where she alleged abortion is a top campaign issue in 2024, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

And while the political calculations in Michigan translated into Democratic control of state government, the results for Michiganders have been unimpressive.

In recent years, outbound migration has increased significantly as Democrats repealed right-to-work legislation and approved other policies that have contributed to a freefall across a variety of metrics experts use to gauge success in governance.

Whitmer’s own Growing Michigan Together Council raised the alarm in a December report about how the state is now “lagging in median income, educational outcomes, and attainment and have fallen behind faster-growing peer states in key measures of infrastructure, community well-being, and job opportunities.”

More recently, U.S. News & World Report’s “Best States” analysis ranked Michigan 42nd for 2024, sliding from 41st last year.

The report shows Michigan students have below average math scores, are less likely to graduate high school, and leave college with more debt compared to the national average. Whitmer’s Michigan also has a higher poverty rate, lower median household income, more industrial toxins, more drinking water violations, less renewable energy usage, worse roads, and higher rates of incarceration and violent crime than most states.

Another analysis of the best high schools from the same sight ranked Michigan 31st nationally, dropping five spots from 2023 when it ranked 26th, tied with Kentucky. Other measures of Democratic governance have come from the U.S. Census Bureau, 24/7 Wall Street, the United Van Lines’ 47th Annual National Movers Study, and other reports detailing Michigan’s lagging population growth and predicted decline next decade.