By Cash Michaels
Contributing Writer
County boards of elections don’t begin mailing out absentee ballots to eligible voters in North Carolina until Sept. 6th, and in-person early voting doesn’t begin until Oct. 11th, so there are no ballots cast as of yet.
But if recent voter registration numbers for both Democrats and Republicans across the state are any indication, the November 5th general election may see one of the largest voter turnouts in recent election years.
As of August 10th, 2024, there were 2,402,172 Democrats; 2,269,714 Republicans; and 2,849,518 unaffiliated voters in North Carolina.
Racially, there are 4,898,445 whites; 1,509,362 Blacks; and 664,272 undesignated; along with 308,345 Hispanics.
Gender-wise in North Carolina, females far outpace males across the state, 3,771174 to 3,213340.
Recent reporting shows that in the rural areas of the state, Republican registration has gone up dramatically.
Even though there are more registered Robeson County Democrats than there are Republicans, GOP voter registration over the past 20 years shows an uptick of 94%, from 7,274 registrations in December 2004 to 14,111 by July 27, 2024, according to WRAL-TV.
Meanwhile, Democratic voter registrations went down 40%, and unaffiliated registrations went up a whopping 327% from 5,942 to 25,367.
WRAL tracked voter registration figures in 25 North Carolina counties and found the same trend occurring as in Robeson County, which is a 60% majority - minority county with Blacks and Native Americans.
The TV station found urban counties, however, like Durham, Wake and Orange, displaying the opposite trend, with their number of Democratic registrations growing.
According to Chris Cooper, a Madison Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, “From July 20-July 26, 2,351 people registered as Democrats in North Carolina--a 44 percent increase as compared to the previous week. New Republican and Unaffiliated voters, on the other hand, were both down from the previous week (-23% and -14% respectively).”
Prof. Cooper continues, “While this is good news for Democrats, we should not lose track of the larger story line: Democrats are losing in terms of voter registration, and a Harris effect of this size, even if it is sustainable, would not be enough to arrest the larger trends in party registration. As Andy Jackson of the John Locke Foundation notes, the available evidence indicates that Republicans will do better than Democrats during both the 2024 registration rise and the 2025 registration fall, leading them to overtake Democrats sometimes in 2025 or 2026.”
Still, given the stakes of the November 5th general election in less than 90 days, most observers are counting on a Democratic explosion of voter registration, especially in North Carolina’s African-American community, to win the state for VP Harris, and down ballot statewide races.
Voter registration ends in North Carolina on Oct. 11th at 5 p.m. (with the exception of early voting - same day registration).
