Democrats in North Carolina have begun a door-to-door campaign covering every road in the state, after former governor Roy Cooper's Senate victory over Michael Whatley, Donald Trump's hand-picked candidate, was confirmed in the first results. Party organisers said the approach was adopted at a late-night meeting in Raleigh and will be applied to every county in the state before the next election cycle.
The operation, which the state party has named the Long Walk, requires volunteers to knock on each front door in the state, ask residents about their cost of living and write the answers by hand in a ledger. Ledgers will be carried to the state capital on foot by teams of volunteers working in shifts. Party officials confirmed that the first shipment, weighing several tonnes of paper, is expected to arrive at the state party office by the end of next month.
Cooper, who has never lost an election in almost forty years in politics, said in a brief statement that he had personally walked the first two hundred miles of the route. "The people of North Carolina deserve a senator who has seen their kitchens," he said. "Seeing a kitchen takes time, and I intend to spend it."
Local authorities in several counties have already begun widening rural lanes to accommodate the teams, and a regional hospital has offered its car park to house the ledgers while they wait for transport. Republican leaders in the state declined to comment on the scheme, though one senior aide was seen carrying a sign that read simply "Walk Faster".