On Friday October 19, 152,356 North Carolinians voted early. This is down from 156,129 from Thursday, but up from the 118,961 who voted on the second day of One Stop Early Voting in 2008. These numbers include mail ballots as well as in-person ballots. Overall, turnout is up 26.6% from the same time in 2008. People in North Carolina are clearly motivated to vote this year.
Click on the picture below for a full sized chart.
Based on the demographics and party registration of who is voting, we can make an estimate of exactly how many votes. This is not the same as the actual vote totals, but because voting is relatively polarized in NC, it is probably not very far from the truth (see methodology from the previous diary).
Turnout among minorities and white Democrats is up over 2008, and as a result Obama probably received about 85,744 votes on Friday (compared to 70,802 votes on this Friday in 2008):
But turnout is also up among Republicans over 2008. As a result of this, Romney received an estimated 66,612 votes on Friday, whereas John McCain got about 48,159 votes on the 2nd day of early voting in 2008:
So what does this high turnout mean?
Well, it depends in part on who exactly the people are who are voting early in 2012 but didn't vote in 2008.
Category 1:/Are they new registrants? Are they unlikely voters? Are they people who would not otherwise vote on election day?
Because if they fit that description, then they are a boon to whichever campaign is turning them out. That is increasing the eventual total of votes that will be cast.
But if they are...
Category 2 consistent high turnout voters who would otherwise simply vote on election day, then all that is happening is they are voting now rather than then. That doesn't change the eventual total of votes that will be cast.
I don't have any specific evidence of this, but I would suspect that more of the new people that are turning out for Obama fit Category 1, while more of the people turning out for Romney fit Category 2.
If that is correct, then Romney is merely getting his votes now rather than on election day, whereas Obama is getting votes that he would not otherwise get on election day - including people who were not even registered to vote just a few days ago. And those people who were not even registered to vote a few days ago do not show up on polls with RV screens, much less on polls with LV screens.
Vote Margins:
Overall, you can see that the general pattern of increasing Obama cumulative vote margins is similar to 2008. However, Obama's vote margin is a bit behind 2008, because of the higher GOP early turnout (even though Dem early turnout is also higher).
You can see the same thing with daily vote margins. The day to day trends so far are consistent with 2008, but Obama is pulling slightly smaller margins out at the end of the day.
Vote Percentages:
The same basic trend is visible when you look at the percentage of the vote that Obama is getting. Obama is winning the early vote, but because more Republicans are voting early, he is winning it by a slightly lower percentage than in 2008. However, the way McCain was able to come back and almost win North Carolina was by dominating the election-day vote. If more Republicans who would otherwise vote on election day are voting early, then that could make it more difficult for Romney to get as many votes as McCain did on election day.
And the same thing is apparent with daily Obama support percentages.
Previous NC Early Voting Diaries:
Day 1
11:00 AM PT: UPDATE - It turns out that some counties in NC update their early voting numbers after the NC Secretary of State runs its statewide report. As a result of this, I am missing some votes. I quickly re-ran the numbers for Day 1, and this increases Obama's Day 1 margin by about 3,000 votes. This means that Obama is right on his 2008 pace, except there is even higher turnout. Tomorrow's diary and future diaries will take this into account. Thanks to dean4ever (in comments) for pointing this out!