A profile of NC voters shows the group both parties will woo in 2024 | Opinion

It’s not clear who all the candidates will be in North Carolina in 2024, but it’s becoming clear who the voters will be.

Carolina Demography, a research group at UNC-Chapel HIll’s Carolina Population Center, recently issued statistical profiles of North Carolina’s three largest voter groups: the unaffiliated, the Democrats and the Republicans.

Unaffiliated voters are the largest group, having recently passed Democrats, but registered voters overall remain close to evenly divided. There are 2.4 million registered Democrats, 2.2 million registered Republicans and 2.6 million people who are registered as unaffiliated.

The profiles show that much of the unaffiliated voters’ growth is driven by young people. While voters younger than 35 make up 28% of registered voters overall, they make up 35% of the unaffiliated group

The unaffiliated group is also slightly whiter than the overall voter population, 66% to 64%, and interestingly two-thirds of unaffiliated voters who provided their place of birth were born outside of North Carolina.

Meanwhile, North Carolina’s registered Republicans are older, dominant in the western part of the state and overwhelmingly white. Eighty-eight percent of Republican voters are white compared to 64% of registered voters overall.

Registered Democrats also are older than the state average, but much more diverse. Forty six percent of registered Democrats are Black and 40% are white. Democrats are most heavily concentrated in the state’s northeastern counties though their numbers are largest in North Carolina’s fast-growing urban counties.

Voters who are younger and moving to North Carolina from Northeastern states would appear to benefit Democrats, but many are choosing to register as unaffiliated.

That poses a conundrum to the new head of the state Democratic Party, Anderson Clayton, a North Carolina native who became party chair this year at 25. She is the youngest state Democratic chair in the nation.

Clayton said the growth in unaffiliated voters is not necessarily a loss for the Democratic Party.

“I think we have to expand what we consider to be our base. Unaffiliated voters should be part of that,” she said. “Our party spent a lot of time running away from unaffiliated voters instead of running toward them, as we should have been.”

Clayton is trying to shift Democratic strategy to woo the unaffiliated, especially those who might want to run for office.

“We have to do it in a way of slowly and surely coaxing people into seeing this is an organization that is good to be involved in,” she said.

Michael Whatley, the Republican state party chair, also sees unaffiliated voters as a potential gain for the GOP.

“Historically, they’ve always chosen to be Democrats,” he said of voters who are now choosing a third option. “When they register as unaffiliated, that, to me, is an opportunity to go have a conversation.”

While unaffiliated voters outnumber the affiliated, many consistently vote Republican or Democratic. Still, both major parties see those voters as up for grabs.

“There are conservatives and liberals who are unaffiliated but there is a huge chunk of that group that are going to be swing voters,” Whatley said. “That block is going to determine every election, particularly statewide elections in North Carolina.”

Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, has studied the rise in unaffiliated voters. He told The Washington Post that many unaffiliated voters are open to voting for candidates of both parties.

“Not all unaffiliateds are swing voters, but all swing voters are unaffiliated,” he said. “The parties and the candidates have absolutely changed their messages. They target messages to these voters.”

For success in 2024, North Carolina’s candidates will have to reach beyond their party’s ranks. Increasingly, that will mean appealing to younger, unaffiliated voters who are not native to North Carolina.

This story was originally published October 15, 2023 at 4:30 AM with the headline "A profile of NC voters shows the group both parties will woo in 2024 | Opinion."