Heavy Early Turnout In North Carolina

1:07 pm EST October 18th, 2008 | Politics | 4 Comments

Don’t let up, fight like you’re still 10 points behind.

Across the state, Democrats showed the most first-day enthusiasm. Of the nearly 114,000 first-day voters, 64 percent were Democrats, 21 percent Republicans and 15 percent unaffiliateds.

African American turnout was up significantly. Black voters, who make up about 22 percent of registered voters, were 36 percent of Thursday’s early voters.

In 2004, blacks made up 18.6 percent of voters.

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4 Responses to “Heavy Early Turnout In North Carolina”

  1. C.S.Strowbridge says:
    October 18, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    I’ve seen some polls that weighted the AA vote so that it was lower than it was in 2004. Powerfully retarded, but hopefully that will convince Democrats that they need to fight hard.

    On a side note, 114k voters is about 3% of the total vote from 2004. That is not statistically irrelevant, and it should help shorten lines on the 4th.

  2. Parthenon says:
    October 18, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    Don’t let up, fight like you’re still 10 points behind.

    Definitely. Play to the whistle, and so forth. Encouraging though.

  3. drinkof says:
    October 18, 2008 at 6:23 pm

    Wake County (Raleigh) opened 4 spots for early voting this Thur-Sun.

    The 114k was for the first day, which was Thursday. One of the 4 locations here in Wake is very near my house (closer than my polling place in fact), and its on a regular route out of my neighborhood, so I have driven by it a number of times over the past few days. I’d be surprised if Friday and Saturday turnout wasn’t higher; there were lines, often long, every time I went by, including when I went to actually vote today.

    Don’t get me wrong; they’re moving them through, the NC system is very well organized, also using the optically scanned paper ballot that ought to be used everywhere. But, at any rate, if I’m right, and it continues in the 1/2 day tomorrow, that runs up turnout the first week to 400k.

    The next 2 weeks they open up another 10 here in Wake, Even assuming the really dedicated folks are piling in early, it still wouldn’t surprise me to see it climb u over a million early voting in the 8 remaining days after this week, given 400k in four days. That is significant numbers, and should keep the lines about where they were 4 years ago (turnout will be way up on every front here).

    BTW, if my quick view of those voting while I was there today is correct, 3/4 were Obama voters. Obama may be up by 1/2 million in NC when election day starts.

  4. Nancy says:
    October 18, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    I was one of them…well, on Day 2 of early voting. The polling place I visited was rather equal on voter make-up, as far as race is concerned. I was also proud to see a young woman, who looked like she was barely eligible to vote, walk out of the place with a big grin on her face. I smiled the whole day thinking about her, especially as I remembered her walking to her car with the O/B sticker on it!