Undesignated voters

by | Oct 30, 2020 | 2020 elections, Editor's Blog | 3 comments

At this point in the election cycle, I’m obsessing over turnout numbers and trying to glean any information I can about the potential outcome. I wait for various analysts to tell me how many people voted the previous day and what the break down looks like. I wait for Gerry Cohen and Michael Bitzer to post threads on turn out. I wait for Civitas to update its Votetracker site. While I get a sense of the electorate, I never get much closer to determining or predicting an outcome. 

This year, we are watching an unprecedented number of voters going to the polls. Throughout my career, I’ve been told that higher turnout is good for Democrats. When Barack Obama won the state in 2008, 72% of the registered voters turned out. When Donald Trump won, only 69% voted. The discrepancy has driven the GOP to institute voter suppression programs to keep turnout low and is driving their efforts to stop ballots from being counted now. 

That said, the numbers at first glance seem worrisome for Democrats. As a share of the overall early vote, Democrats are down from 41%  in 2016 to 38% now. Republicans, in contrast, are just one percent below their share of 32% in 2016. The difference is made up by unaffiliated voters who this year are now 30% of the early vote compared to 26% in 2016. 

I’m never too worried about Democrats’ shrinking share because their portion of the overall registered voters has been dropping for decades and will continue to fall in the coming years. North Carolina still has a lot of older registered Democrats who haven’t voted for a Democrat at the federal level for decades. I call them Jessiecrats because they started voting for Republicans when Jesse Helms first wooed them. I’ve seen them called “legacy Democrats” and “ancestral Democrats” and “Reagan Democrats.” Regardless, they are dying and will reduce Democrats’ share of registered voters for another decade or so and will be replaced by younger unaffiliated voters who tend to support Democrats more often than Republicans. 

The most alarming measure, though, is the falling number of Black voters. In 2016, they made up 22% of the early vote while only comprising 19.5% of the vote so far. That 2% drop would signal a red alert except for one thing: White voters are down 4% as a share of the electorate. They made up 71% of the 2016 early vote but are only comprising 66% of the early vote so far. That statistic should give Republicans pause since they are a party of almost all White people.  

So if Black voters and White voters are down as a percentage of the electorate, where did that vote go? To a group called “undesignated” or “race or ethnicity unknown.” Back in 2016, they only made up 2.7% of the early vote. This year, they make up 9% and their share of the electorate grows every day. To put them in perspective, they make up more than 365,000 voters so far. 

So who are these undesignated voters? I don’t know much but I know that 44% of them are unaffiliated. Their profile looks more like younger voters than older ones. And they are making up a significant portion of the surge voter we’re seeing now. They could easily make the difference in who wins and who loses in the state. 

Finally, the big unknown is who actually votes on election day. By the end of the day today, more than half of the people who voted on election day in 2016 will have already voted. Republicans have historically voted at a much higher percentage on E-Day, but the margin is what matters. They will need a surge of new voters since more than half of their traditional election day voters have voted early.

The other unknown in this election is the voting preference of the “undesignated” voters and the unaffiliated voters. One group, undesignated, is cutting into the percentage of White and Black voters and the other, unaffiliated voters, is cutting into the share of Democrats more than Republicans. Undesignated voters are voting at more than three times their 2016 turnout and will make up a large portion of the surge voters. How the unaffiliated voters break will probably determine the outcome of the election.

3 Comments

  1. Ben Henderson

    Hey Thomas, as always I enjoy your analysis and insights! I have a thought about this post: You’ve said that unaffiliated and undesignated voters make up a pretty substantial voting block. From the ground, would it then be safe to say that these folks are very unlikely to be the Trump voters (fanatics) who have covered the states with their signs? If someone just looked at the number of their roadside/real estate signs, one might think this entire state was deep, deep red, which can be pretty depressing sometimes. I think they just scream the loudest (and steal Democrats signs!).

    We are keeping the faith up here in Boone!

  2. Christopher Holly

    Thanks for this, Thomas. I too have been tracking the early voting in NC and have been perplexed at how low the totals have been compared to other swing states (see Texas). Thanks to you, I understand now,

  3. K Parks

    I agree that younger people are registering as U’s across the board, now that the form makes it more obvious that party, race, gender, and ethnicity are optional. I tend to think they are on the more progressive side, since conservatives tend to like their categories (especially sex) neat and defined.

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