We are 8 days into the North Carolina 60-day vote by mail absentee request period (earliest in the nation), 9668 total requests have been received by the counties. The top six counties are: Mecklenburg (Charlotte) 1381, Wake (Raleigh and Cary) 1182, Guilford (Greensboro) 683, Forsyth (Winston-Salem) 500, Buncombe (Asheville) 405, Durham (Durham) 353, (Those counties are 34% of the State population and 46% of requests. In 2010 those six counties made up 38.8% of the voted by-mail ballots).
There are 377 absentee votes already received back by the counties and accepted, Democratic 46.7%, Republican 35.8%, Libertarian 0.3%, Unaffiliated 17.2%. Black voters make up 14.9% of total. Democrats have a big margin so far in the traditional GOP dominated mode of vote-by-mail. In 2010 there were a total of 53,200 vote by mail ballots accepted during the 60-day period, Democratic 36.1%, Republican 45.2%, Unaffiliated 18.6%, Libertarian 0.1%. Blacks were 8.7% of voted 2010 by-mail ballots. Thus the small sample of 377 votes by mail accepted by so far shows a 20 point swing from R to D compared with the full 2010 pool (D+10.6%, R-9.4%). Early energy burst or sustainable trend?
Tiny rural Bladen County shows the heaviest organizing as % of county population, 220 vote-by-mail requests, Democratic 73.6%, Unaffiliated 23.6%, GOP 2.7%. Black voters make up 52% of the Bladen requests. Bladen has 22,498 registered voters, 12.2% of whom are GOP and 37% are Black.
Here's the Civitas 2010 vote tracker, http://www.carolinatransparency.com/...
and the spreadsheet of 2014 votes accepted ftp://alt.ncsbe.gov/...
NC has registration with party and race noted in the voter file making this analysis possible. We of course don't know how anyone voted in 2014, ballots will be counted election day
Yes I know 377 is a small sample, but in 2010 we got to 377 accepted ballots September 23, day 21 of 60, this year we got to that number on day 8 of 60. That's one measure of voter enthusiasm
UPDATE 1: (2pm EDT) Catawba College Political ScienceProf (and Provost) Michael Bitzer blogs on the 2014 NC vote by mail stats with lots of bar graphs and more analysis
http://nc-politics.blogspot.com/...