NC has an increasing influx of blue state folks moving in, especially in the Raleigh area. They no longer find the morass that is FL particularly appealing. And, NC doesn't often see real cold. Its real estate is also not in imminent danger of washing away from rising seas (excepting the OBX, of course). All of this has our metro areas becoming solidly blue blocks in elections.

Wake County is actually a strongly progressive enclave. We have stellar medical services, from UNC-Chapel Hill, to Duke, to WakeMed. Our EMS services are world class. The RTP is the third largest tech sector in the world.

Because the military had us moving around so much, and because so much of my kin live in Southern states – I've experienced school systems all over the South. IME, Wake County (followed by the rest of the RTP area) schools are the best in the state, if not the entire South.

After Gov. Hunt (of the Hunt Institute) left office, the GOP did everything they could to dismantle his education legacy in NC. Then, we got the influx of educated, liberal folk with the RTP (for which we can also thank Hunt) from the West Coast and the Northeeast. They made the RTP and especially Wake County into a progressive bastion in the state.