Observations on the first day of in-person early voting in North Carolina

It's too early to tell if we're seeing patterns and there's no good comparison.

In-person early voting started in North Carolina yesterday. It’s too early to get much information about the electorate and since we were under COVID restrictions in 2020, there’s no reliable comparison. As voting gets underway in earnest, we can get some idea of how the electorate will look, but we won’t get any sense of the outcome until the votes are counted. North Carolina is just too closely divided for turnout data to give us that information.

That said, according to VoteTracker, 353,166 people voted yesterday. That’s slightly more than the 348,599 who voted in-person in 2020 on the first day of early voting, but four years ago, mail-in ballots were pouring into the Board of Elections. Back then the Board of Elections received more than 26,000 mail-in ballots on the first day of early voting, while this year, they received just under 6,100. Overall, there were 919,489 votes cast by the first of in-person early voting in 2020 and only 428,300 cast this year, less than half that of four years ago.

The electorate so far looks better for Republicans than it did in 2020. Back then, Democrats made up more than 49% of the voters while Republicans only made up 22%. This year, the split is almost even with Democrats casting 36% of the ballots and Republicans 33% of them. Unaffiliated voters made up about 29% both years.

The electorate so far is whiter and slightly more male than it was in 2020. Back then, white voters made up 67% of the voters and African American voters made up 22%. This year, white voters have cast 70% of the ballots and Black voters have cast 19%. In 2020, men only cast 41% of the ballots and this year, they’ve cast 43% of them.

As I said at the beginning, comparing 2024 numbers to 2020 is dubious at best. Back then, Trump was telling his people not to use mail-in ballots and to vote on Election Day. This year, he’s telling people to vote early. In contrast, Democrats were telling people to vote by mail to avoid COVID and to bank votes. There’s been no serious push for mail-in ballots by the party this year.

At first glance, there are warning signs for Democrats in North Carolina, but it’s too early to tell if we’re seeing patterns or not. Since COVID skewed voting behavior four years ago, we don’t have a good comparison, but Republicans seem more motivated to vote early. Traditionally, they have dominated Election Day turnout. They could be shifting their behavior and voting earlier than they have in the past. Democrats, for their part, could be just getting warmed up. We’ll know a lot more a week from now than we do today.

Don’t panic. Vote.