Primary elections are always low-turnout affairs, and North Carolina’s early-voting run-up to Super Tuesday is no exception, with a turnout thus far of just 6.6% statewide.
In a biennial orgy of obsessive-compulsive disorder, every election year EQV Analytics posts stats like that one, and many more, updated daily throughout the state’s 17-day early voting period. We do it because we believe strongly in the predictive power of early voting analysis. In 2016 for example we used early voting analysis to correctly predict that Hillary Clinton would lose in North Carolina (and, thus, probably nationally as well), even as pundits like the NY Times, FiveThirtyEight, and Daily Kos Elections were still predicting a Clinton landslide.
And this year’s numbers seem to be even more interesting. Sure, this is only the primary, but we find that primary voting patterns are often harbingers of those to be seen later, in the general.
First and foremost among those interesting stats are the impressive turnout numbers being posted by undergraduates at many of the state’s leading universities. We’ve never seen anything quite like it before (see chart, above).
Our list is topped by prestigious Duke University, whose undergraduates are currently posting an awe-inspiring 19% turnout — nearly 3 times the statewide figure for the electorate overall. But it’s not just wealthy kids at expensive private schools who are turning out in droves; we also see better-than-statewide performance at the more working-class state schools, like North Carolina State University and the state’s largest HBCU, NC A&T. And I need to emphasize here that these turnout numbers are for undergraduates only — there should be little or no representation of faculty, staff, and grad students in these numbers, thanks to a novel analytical algorithm we’ve devised this year. In fact, when we experimented with including graduate students in our analysis, university turnout numbers went down, not up. It is the very youngest cohort of voters, 18 to 22 year-olds, who are leading this turnout bonanza.
In other good news, unaffiliated voters (of all ages, and statewide — not just college students) who choose to vote in the Democratic primary are way up this year. It’s the first of the many demographic groups we’re tracking this year who have already topped their 2016 ballot volume. (Good news for John McCain?) 1
In a singular bit of bad news, we find no evidence so far of strong voter engagement among the state’s African Americans (who comprise 47% of its Democratic voters). That’s probably not surprising given the absence of people of color at the top of the ballot, plus the distinctly chilly reception the DSCC has given to the top African American woman candidate this year, Erica Smith for U.S. Senate.
On the other hand, we find that voter suppression — as reflected in provisional ballot voting — is way down this year compared to 2016. That’s thanks in large measure to a court overturning 2016’s onerous but short-lived voter ID requirement. Provisional ballots voted because the voter could not present acceptable ID are down over 90% this year. Also, provisionals voted because no record could be found of the would-be voter’s registration are down a whopping 74% this year. Two big wins for voting rights in the Tar Heel State.
Find these and many more interesting data points (literally thousands more, but packaged very digestibly) at our incredibly boringly named election dashboard page, North Carolina Election 2020 Primary 1.
Life is short. Eat dessert first, then vote early.
Footnote 1: The obvious oxymoron “Good news for John McCain!” is an old Daily Kos insider joke.