While all eyes are on the November 6 General Election as the culmination of this year's campaign season, North Carolina voters have already been casting ballots through mail-in absentee voting, and things are just about to shift into an even higher gear as one-stop early voting begins this Thursday, October 18. Naturally, political campaigns, reporters, political pundits, and party activists are keeping a close watch on early voting to see if it provides any indication of voter sentiment and what that might mean for the remainder of the campaign. As the amount of data and information reaches a crescendo in advance of Election Day, the NC FreeEnterprise Foundation thought it would be helpful to break down early voting in North Carolina to-date and examine how it compares to the 2008 election. After all, a majority of ballots in the last presidential race in North Carolina were cast before Election Day even arrived.

 

Early Voting in 2008

 

In 2008, over 2.4 million North Carolina voters voted through one-stop early voting, with Democrats substantially out-performing Republicans. Of the ballots cast in 2008 through one-stop early voting, 53.6 percent were completed by Democrats, 27.9 percent were by Republicans, and 18.4 percent were by Unaffiliated voters. Even though Republicans cast significantly more mail-in absentee ballots, Democrats were largely over represented among voters utilizing one-stop early voting, as the table below demonstrates.

Since one-stop early voting doesn't begin until this Thursday (and runs through Saturday, November 3), the only performance data we have to compare to 2008 right now is absentee mail-in ballots. These totals are updated every day when the State Board of Elections releases new data. As of this reporting, 56,783 absentee ballots have been cast, with Republicans making up 54.1 percent of those ballots, Democrats 27.4 percent, and Unaffiliated voters 18.3 percent. These figures, so far, track very closely with partisan performance in absentee voting in 2008, with Republicans performing only slightly better. See the chart below created by Associate Professor of Politics and History at Catawba College and friend of the NC FreeEnterprise Foundation, Dr. Michael Bitzer, for a comparison.  

 

Even with the limited data available at this point, it is important to pay attention to how early voting is shaping up. In 2008, more than 2.6 million of the 4.3 million ballots cast in North Carolina - or over 60 percent - were cast through absentee and one-stop early voting. With an even greater emphasis on early voting by the presidential, gubernatorial and other campaigns and a greater willingness on behalf of the voters to take advantage of the convenience of early voting, it seems likely that an even larger share of ballots will be cast in North Carolina before Election Day arrives on November 6.

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NCFEF staff John Rustin and Jonathan Kappler contributed to this report.  

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