Heading towards the Nov. 4th finish line, Dems have racked up a big lead in early voting.
This is Part 5 of a 6-part series. Collect the whole set:
1 (10/27),
2 (10/28),
3 (10/29),
4 (10/30),
5 (11/1)
By all rights, Saturday's final day of early voting in North Carolina should have been an anticlimax, what with its abbreviated hours (just 3.5, as opposed to 8 to 10 hours on preceding days), plus the fact that the day dawned rainy, blustery, and what passes for cold around these parts. But that expectation reflects old thinking from the antebellum (pre-voter suppression) days. What happened, instead, is that voters continued to turn out in droves, managing to cast 66% as many ballots on Saturday as they had on this season's best day, last Friday.
Wow. Just...wow.
The trend we have seen all week - Democrats spanking Republicans - continued (see graph above). The GOP thus goes into Election Day with a 182,000 vote deficit to make up, compared with its 95,000 vote deficit at this same point in 2010.
With regard to participation broken down by party affiliation and ethnicity, here too the trends we have observed all week held up well through the final day of early voting:
NC's sons and daughters of color continued to lead the way.
Dems continued to out-poll Republicans, finishing up the week by having cast 1.49 ballots for every 1 ballot cast by Republicans, improving their early voting turnout from 2010's lackluster 16% to 20% this year. Republicans, in contrast, rested on their laurels (among other things), doing no better than the same 18% turnout they had managed by this point in 2010.
But the real story continued to be the minority vote, driven by outrage over overtly racist Republican attempts to suppress it. African-Americans managed a final 19.4% turnout, up from 14.9% in 2010, while other people of color improved from 5.5% in 2010 to 8.8% this year. The net result is that minority voters, led by African-Americans, have cast a total of 328,000 ballots so far this cycle, compared to just 206,000 at this point in 2010. While blacks comprise just 22% of North Carolina's population, they have cast 25% of all the ballots turned in so far this year.
Women, too, have stepped up to the plate this year, casting 1.21 votes for every male vote (thus improving on their already good ratio of 1.16 in 2010). The major remaining question mark (on my spreadsheet, anyway) is the youth vote: the average voting age so far this year is 58, equalling the 2010 value. Are Carolina's young-folk living up to their great promise? A suggestion that they may be is found in the Unaffiliated vote total (typically rich in Millenials), which is at 148% of its 2010 level.
The final installment in this series, taking a deep dive into the final numbers for this election cycle, will be published on Nov. 5th.
If you haven't voted yet, don't you dare let us down now, so close to the Promised Land. VOTE TOMORROW!
"If we ever needed to vote, we sure do need to vote now!" - Rev. William J. Barber II
This is Part 5 of a 6-part series. Collect the whole set:
1 (10/27), 2 (10/28), 3 (10/29), 4 (10/30), 5 (11/1)