John Davis Consulting

Early Voting Stats Shows 5.3% Shift to GOP in North Carolina; National Trend Favors Romney

According to POLITICO’s Lois Romano in her 11/2/12 story titled, Obama early vote edge tenuous, Obama no longer has the early voting advantage that he enjoyed in 2008.

 As for North Carolina in 2012, Democrats are down 3.85% in early voting turnout compared to 2008, and Republicans are up 1.46%.  That’s a net GOP gain of 5.28%.   John Davis Political Report, 11/5/2012

 Monday, November 5, 2012       Vol. V, No. 39           1:13 pm

If Mitt Romney has neutralized President Obama’s 2008 early voting advantage, he will win.

Obama’s strategic advantage has always been the ground game: voter registration and turnout.  That was how he won in 2008.  A ground game requires tens of thousands of enthusiastic volunteers.  In 2008, Obama had them and the GOP didn’t.  In 2012, the GOP has seized the enthusiastic volunteers advantage, thereby neutralizing the early voting turnout advantage.

According to POLITICO’s Lois Romano in her 11/2/12 story titled, Obama early vote edge tenuous, it was anticipated that Obama would not achieve his 2008 early voting advantage.

Romano cited a Pew Research Center report that says neither Obama nor Romney “has a clear advantage among early voters. This is in sharp contrast to early voting at this point four years ago, which favored Obama by a wide margin.”

Further evidence of the shifting early voting fortunes favoring Romney can be found in a study by George Mason University of requested mail ballots in key swing states.  Example:

In Florida, 406,634 registered Democrats have not returned their mail ballots compared to 362,920 Republicans. In comparison, registered Democrats have returned 700,970 mail ballots compared to 781,043 Republicans.

As to overall early voting turnout, according to the United States Elections Project, maintained by George Mason University, a total of 31,660,358 Americans voted early in 2012, down from the 40,592,111 who voted early in 2008 (30.6% of 132,653,958 voted early in 2008).

Although North Carolina has about 120,000 more early voters than in 2008, the percent of the total vote is less (41.8% in 2008; 41.3% in 2012) due to overall registration growing from 6.3 million voters to 6.6 million during the past 4 year.

North Carolina Early Voting Shifts 5.3% in Favor of Republicans

As for North Carolina in 2012, a loss of 3.85% among Democratic early voting turnout compared to 2008, and a gain of 1.46% for Republicans compared to 2008, has yielded a net GOP gain of 5.28%.

2008 Early Voting Turnout – North Carolina Total: 2,618,419 of 6,264,733 (41.8%)

• Democrats                  51.52%
• Republicans                30.01%
• Unaffiliateds               18.4%
• Libertarians

2012 Early Voting Turnout – North Carolina Total: 2,738,947 of 6,631,904  (41.3%)

• Democrats                  47.67%
• Republicans                31.44
• Unaffiliateds               20.66%
• Libertarians                0.22%

In addition to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, a great website for seeing early voting stats is www.carolinatransparency.com/votetracker/, which is maintained by the Civitas Institute.

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