Early voting sets presidential pace
https://www.wral.com/early-voting-sets-presidential-pace/17937989/
Raleigh, N.C. — The early voting trend looks a lot more like a presidential election year than it does a midterm election.
After five days of early voting, including the first weekend, more than 450,000 people have voted, according to statistics compiled Monday by
Catawba College Professor Michael Bitzer, one of North Carolina's authorities on politics and voting.
Those numbers are a lot more like 2016 than 2014, let alone the last time North Carolina had a "blue moon" election like this year's election – a ballot without a presidential, gubernatorial or U.S. Senate race.
What's it all mean? Too soon to say, Bitzer said Monday.
"If this trend of looking like a presidential election continues to hold (and we may/may not see that happen this week), then I would think that all bets are off for what this truly portends," the political science professor said in an email. "We’ve never seen something like this kind of an early start to the polls in a North Carolina mid-term election, so we may be comparing apples to watermelons."
Here's some initial analysis from Bitzer, though:
- Republicans and unaffiliated voters are running slightly ahead of their 2016 voting pace. Democrats were running ahead until this weekend but are now running slightly behind. All three groups are well ahead of their 2014 pace.
- Democrats are the largest voting bloc so far.
- So far, the mean age of early voters is 59. The entire 7 million-plus population of registered voters has a mean age of 48.
- Baby Boomers and older requested 68 percent of all early ballots, both via mail and in-person.
- Women make up 52 percent, in line with their registration percentage.
