Closing the gap

Some good news for Democrats in North Carolina.

The Democratic Get-Out-The-Vote machine seems to be moving into high gear as the final week of early voting gets underway. The gap between Black voters who voted in-person in 2020 and 2024 has narrowed from around 77,000 early last week to less than 36,000 as of yesterday. They’ve narrowed the spread by about 18,000 votes in just the past two days. At this rate, the gap will be gone by the end of early voting on Saturday.

In addition, the gap between registered Democrats who voted in-person in 2020 and those who have voted early in 2024 is gone. If this trend continues, Democrats will have substantially more registered Democrats this year than four years ago by the end of the early voting period. They’ve closed the gap despite having more than 213,700 fewer registered Democrats now than in 2020. To put that in perspective, 43% of registered Democrats have voted so far this year compared to the 40% who had voted at this point in the in-person early voting process four years ago.

Democrats have been losing registration for about 50 years as North Carolina transitioned from a one-party state to a two-party state. Many of the Democrats who left the party over integration initially registered independent. Over time, they became Republicans which increased the GOP share of the registered voters until it stabilized at between 30% and 32%. Democratic registration in the state will likely continue to shrink as older Dixiecrats die and younger voters who support Democrats register unaffiliated. For years, the unaffiliated voters were dominated by conservative voters, but younger voters stopped registering with a party in the post-Obama age. Today, the unaffiliated vote is shifting toward Democrats as it becomes younger and more diverse, though we don’t how fast yet.

As for those unaffiliated voters, they are voting at a record rate, far outpacing their 2020 numbers. They are still older, but the number of younger voters is increasing. Almost a quarter of in-person early voters are 35 years old or younger while about 45% are over 55 years old. They are also increasingly first-time voters and 56% of those new unaffiliated voters are 35 years old or younger.

Both Democrats and Republicans are still largely banking votes. About 90% of the registered Democrats and Republicans who have cast ballots so far were high propensity voters. Only the unaffiliated voters are seeing much growth in new voters at about 15%.

For a little anecdotal good news for Democrats, a veteran field operative who came to the state last weekend to canvas says that the Democrats’ GOTV program is as good as anything he’s seen since 2008. He spent time in eastern North Carolina and says the operation is well staffed by competent field operatives and that the technology being used increases efficiently dramatically. He’s optimistic that the field operation will deliver valuable votes for Democrats.

As I’ve been saying all year, Democrats in North Carolina need to change the electorate from 2020 for the Democratic nominee for president to carry the state. Republicans had a turnout of 81% four years ago while Democrats lagged by 6% at 75%. Democrats need to close that gap by a few points and win a larger share of unaffiliated voters. They need the African American vote, which turned out at 68% in 2020, to exceed 70% this year. Younger voters need to come out in larger numbers, too. If Orange County, home of UNC-CH is any indication, they will since 20-year-olds are now out-pacing 70-year-olds in early voting. Overall, the trends are moving in the right direction for Democrats to keep the election in North Carolina tight all the way to the end.