Author: James Brierton and Blair Shiff for WCNC

Over a third of North Carolina’s registered voters have already cast ballots in the 2024 election, according to the state’s board of election.

Approximately 2,821,000 ballots had been cast through Sunday, according to North Carolina state data. That accounts for about 36% of the state’s eligible approximately 7,793,000 registered voters.

Of those votes, about 2,666,000 were cast in-person during early voting and about 155,000 were absentee ballots, according to the state. About 35% of the state’s approximately 441,000 requested absentee ballots have been returned.

Tuesday marks the deadline to request an absentee ballot for the election the following week.

More than 41 million votes have already been cast in the election nationwide. Democrats generally have an advantage in early voting, but so far, at least, Republicans are participating at a much higher rate than they have in the past.

Data shows 33% of registered Democrats and 34% of registered Republicans have already cast their ballots in the Tar Heel State.

Most of the voters are over 50 and many of them are women. 

“Every election, there’s always some percentage of voters who identify as Republican or Democrat, but they flip to vote for the other party,” Chase Meyer, University of South Carolina political science professor, said. “Is that going to be a small percentage or a large percentage? We don’t know yet.”

Trump has, for years, encouraged his supporters to cast only in-person ballots on Election Day. The practice put the GOP at a significant disadvantage. He largely reversed course in recent months as he and his party acknowledged the obvious benefit of being able to bank their votes as early as possible.

Because of the Republican participation, the early turnout was breaking records last week in swing states such as Georgia and North Carolina.

But with the GOP more focused on election integrity rather than a traditional get-out-the-vote operation, it’s unclear whether the uptick in Republican early voting will continue. Democrats hope it won’t.

Editor’s note: for updated voting statistics, be sure to visit John Locke Foundation’s daily Vote Tracker.

The preceding article originally appeared on August 28, 2024 at WCNC’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law.