Last week I blogged about the unusual Democratic trend in mail-in ballots in North Carolina after 8 days of the 60 day period http://www.dailykos.com/... All is update below
Democrats have a big margin so far in the traditional GOP dominated mode of vote-by-mail in North Carolina, with a 19.6% swing from 2010 when the GOP carried NC
Now we are two full weeks into absentee voting and the party proportion numbers are remaining steady. 12,069 total requests have been received by the counties. Those 12,000+ requests break down by party at D41.3%, R25.9%, U22.4%, and Libertarian 0.3%
There are 1158 absentee votes already received back by the counties and accepted, by party Democratic 46.3%, Republican 35.9%, Libertarian 0.2%, Unaffiliated 17.6%. (compared with the week one totals: Democratic 46.7%, Republican 35.8%, Libertarian 0.3%, Unaffiliated 17.2%) Black voters cumulatively make up 15.0% of the total, up slightly from week 1 total. Black voters only made up 8% of the 2010 mail-in vote. 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 1,158 votes by mail accepted by so far shows a 19.6 point swing from R to D compared with the full 2010 pool (D+10.2%, R-9.4%). If we also look at the 12,000 ballots requested compared with the 1,100+ returned, we also see that Democrats are returning their ballots much faster than the GOP registered voters!
Is all of this an early energy burst or sustainable trend? I asked the same question after one week, the second week sustained the trend pretty closely. If anything Democratic stats are picking up. The ballots returned back and accepted on Thursday alone were almost exactly 50% Democratic.
Wake County (Raleigh and Cary), a county that the GOP carried in 2010, with 10% of the state's total population, had 51 absentee requests Thursday (16% of the state total received yesterday). By party yesterday in Wake: D49%, R16%, U35%.
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.
some nice charts and bar graphs of all of this by Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer:
http://nc-politics.blogspot.com/...
Bitzer noted this morning "This may start to sound like a broken record (is that still a viable comment nowadays with MP3s and iPods?), but the partisan trend in North Carolina's mail-in absentee ballots (early votes) has been holding steady for some time, and continues with today's data from the NC State Board of Elections' website."
also see
http://nc-politics.blogspot.com/...
and thru WEDNESDAY (as of Friday noon EDT) at Professor Michael McDonald's US Election project
http://www.electproject.org/... ElectProject is a dynamic page so I may have been updated by the time you view.