2 million people have already voted in NC. Who are they?
Democrats, women and Black voters are outpacing other groups in North Carolina’s early voting.
Each group is voting at a higher rate than its registration would suggest, according to the State Board of Elections.
More than 1.98 million North Carolinians voted through 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. That’s already 27% of the state’s registered voters.
More than 1.3 million voted at early sites across the state since early voting started last Thursday. An additional 653,000 have voted by absentee ballot.
Who are those voters? Here’s the breakdown by election officials through Monday:
▪ Forty-five percent are Democrats; 26% are Republicans and 28% are Unaffiliated.
Democrats make up 35.7% of the state’s registered voters. Republicans account for 30.2% and Unaffiliated voters, 33.4%.
▪ Women make up nearly 53% of early voters; men are 41.2%. Women account for 49.7% of registrations, while men are 42.2%. (Eight percent of voters are “undesignated.”)
▪ Black voters account for 22.7% of the early vote. They make up 20.7% of registered voters.
White voters are voting in numbers that roughly match their registration: 65.6% to 64%.
Whitney Ross Manzo, a political scientist at Meredith College, said the numbers aren’t surprising.
Democrats “tend to report that they’re more concerned about the pandemic than Republicans,” she said.
In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won the early voting in North Carolina by 84,000 votes while losing the absentee by mail vote by 6,200.
But Republican Donald Trump won Election Day votes by 250,600.
His winning margin statewide — 173,300.
“I would say either side shouldn’t read anything into it,” Manzo said of the early numbers. “Democrats shouldn’t think they’re going to win because of 2016 but Republicans shouldn’t think that they’re going to pull it out because of 2016.”
This story was originally published October 20, 2020 at 4:48 PM.
