Early voting ilne outside Durham County Main Library on Oct. 19. (Photo: Lynn Bonner)
Former President Donald Trump is a persistent critic of early voting. But his campaign this year told supporters to vote before Election Day.
With that push, the GOP is going into the last full week of election season in North Carolina with more of their voters casting ballots than Democrats.
With more than 2.7 million ballots accepted through Saturday, about 29,000 more Republicans had cast ballots than registered Democrats.
In more than half of the western North Carolina counties damaged by Helene the voter turnout rate exceeded the statewide average rate of 35% through Saturday, according to an X post from Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer.
Most of the western North Carolina counties are strongly Republican.
Voter turnout is closely watched in this presidential battleground state. In 2020, Former President Trump defeated President Joe Biden in 74,500 votes in North Carolina. Former President Barack Obama, the last Democrat to win the state, won it by about 14,000.
Democratic consultant Morgan Jackson said he isn’t concerned that Republican turnout is up a bit from four years ago and Democrats are a bit down.
Trump campaign mail in 2024 encourages supporters to vote early. (Photo: Lynn Bonner)
“We have six more days of early vote,” Jackson said Sunday evening. “I think Democrats will be in better shape after this week — even after today.”
Thomas Mills, editor of PoliticsNC, took a look at the numbers and sounded an alarm last week over low Black voter turnout, which was down 77,000 votes from the same time four years ago.
He said in an interview Thursday the gap is closing, but recommended a fine-tuned message and greater focus on rural eastern North Carolina. Efforts there would help both Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Rep. Don Davis, the First District Democrat who is in a competitive race.
“They need to focus their attention on Black working class voters in more rural communities,” he said.
He wrote on Friday that Black voter turnout would have to hit 72% to 73% for Harris to win.
As part of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote push, former President Barack Obama spoke Friday night in Charlotte and Black church leaders encouraged voting in Souls to the Polls events Sunday. Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, will be in Charlotte, Greensboro and Asheville on Wednesday, when Harris is scheduled to speak in Raleigh.
“We have always known this would be a close race, but we’ve built an operation to reach voters in every corner of North Carolina and we’re going to work hard down the final stretch, including with early vote efforts throughout the state, partnerships with churches for Souls to the Polls events, campuses voting drives, and other efforts,” the Harris campaign said in a statement.
In statewide elections, Democrats want to run up big wins in urban counties, including Wake and Mecklenburg County. Turnout in Congressional District 12, which encompasses Charlotte, is behind all other districts, according to a vote tracker maintained by the conservative John Locke Foundation.
In a text message, Julia Buckner, senior advisor for organizing for Mecklenburg County Democrats, said each election cycle has its own cadence, and her group is working on its get-out-the vote plan.
“Certainly, we are monitoring the situation and the numbers to date in the 12th District are down,” Bruckner said. “But we have a good plan for getting out the vote, and we’re knocked on more than 225,000 doors this cycle already.”
Harris is working for the votes of Republicans who don’t want Trump. More than 250,000 voters chose Nikki Haley over Trump in this year’s primary and there’s a question how many will vote for Harris or won’t cast a vote for president, Jackson said. More than 23% of Republican primary voters picked Haley, even though by then she had no chance of winning the nomination.
By far, most of the people who have cast ballots so far are base voters, he said.
The 2% to 4% of voters who can be considered true swing voters haven’t voted yet, which is why candidates’ late closing arguments are important.
“They are going to be determinative for those swing voters who have not made up their mind,” he said.