Republican Antipathy Towards Early Voting May Haunt Them
As I watch the North Carolina in-person early voting unfold, I was struck today that the Democrats appear to have rebound from the first days of a Republican surge. Below is a simple plot of the partisan distribution of the in-person early votes by day.
This is a mirage. Republican in-person early voting is not cratering. Let me explain.
North Carolina law allows counties to set times and hours for in-person early voting within state guidelines. The 2024 general election schedule of in-person early voting is here. Importantly, counties have the option of holding in-person early voting on the weekends, which the larger Democratic counties opted to do.
Why didn’t Republican counties do the same? Probably because their election boards when making their plans heeded Donald Trump’s warnings that early voting is fraudulent. But as the unusual surge in Republicans voting the first days of in-person early voting suggest, these decisions were perhaps shortsighted because it cut off eager Republicans from voting over the weekend. I expect we’ll see the number of Republican voting in-person early to rebound Monday once their county election offices open early voting polling locations again.
The moral is nuances such as this may affect the partisan composition of the early electorate. If the past is a guide there are two dynamics I expect in the coming weeks everywhere in-person early voting is offered:
African-American churches traditionally conduct “Souls to the Polls” voter mobilization the last Sunday in-person early voting is offered, which usually moves the needle on the racial and partisan composition of the early electorate.
The week before the election, younger voters begin voting in greater numbers, which mostly adds more no-party affiliates to the early electorate.
This vignette illustrates why I caution we need to wait till the weekend before the election before drawing any solid conclusions about what early voting may tell us. They may yet be unexpected ups and downs.