It’s been a long-time cliche that Democrats, in North Carolina and across the country, fight to extend voting earlier and earlier, while Republicans resist. A common explanation for this perennial battle is that Democrat-leaning voters are more likely to vote early, and Republican voters preferred coming out on Election Day itself — whether due to tradition, principle, or a sense that it gave potential cheats less time with their ballot.
But this dynamic has been blown out of the water this cycle. Registered Republicans across the state are voting early in far greater rates (at least so far) than they have before, leading to record-breaking early-vote numbers for the state.
As of Oct. 24, there have actually been more Republicans that have voted early in North Carolina than Democrats, but only by a hair. About 34.2% of early voters were registered Republicans, 34.0% were registered Democrats, and 31.3% were unaffiliated. The usual double-digit head start for Democrats has evaporated.
For comparison, according to the John Locke Foundation‘s Vote Tracker, Democrats have dominated early voting in the most recent presidential-year elections. Setting aside the anomalous 2020 COVID-era election, Democrats won early voting by around 20% in 2012 and 10% in 2016.
What can explain so many Republicans suddenly showing up to vote early? Well, it could be as simple as their party asking them to.
After years of getting trounced in early voting and then trying to catch up on Election Day, the GOP made a strategic decision. Even if they didn’t entirely agree with how many early voting days were allowed by state law, they decided to compete within the rules that existed rather than the ones they wanted.
To give a bad extended metaphor, when the NBA created the three-point line, many objected. But it likely didn’t take long for coaches across the league to realize that if you’re down by two and can win the game with a last-second shot from the corner, you take the shot.
So the Republican National Committee created an early vote push across the country, including the Bank Your Vote North Carolina campaign, which was announced in November of 2023. Some in the Republican base pushed back initially, but that resistance has faded, as many influential conservative figures, including President Donald Trump himself, have tried to create enthusiasm around early voting.
Michael Whatley, who was the North Carolina GOP chairman at the time and is now the RNC chair, said, “The North Carolina Republican Party has long been proud to work with the RNC, and partnering on the Bank Your Vote program is an important initiative as we head into this critical election cycle. More than half of all Republicans and Independent Voters in North Carolina will vote before Election Day in 2024 and we must focus on communicating with them to lock in as many Republican votes as possible — Bank Your Vote will do exactly that.”
The idea, as Dallas Woodhouse recently wrote for CJ, is that once you vote, your preferred party and candidate can then take the resources they were devoting to convincing you to go to the polls (mailers, texts, phone calls, door knocking, etc) and devote those resources to getting lower-propensity voters to turn out as well. There are nowhere near as many convincable voters as convinced partisans, which is why many political insiders repeat the line, “It’ll all come down to turnout.”
So, to use another bad extended metaphor, it’s like each party has to race to get as many apples as they can off their respective trees. If one party uses a two-week head start to gather all the low-hanging fruit, they can spend the final day trying to gather those harder-to-reach apples (like that cousin of yours who hasn’t voted in a few cycles). If the other party largely waited until the final day to gather all their apples, they’re at a major disadvantage.
The GOP made the strategic decision to no longer leave so many apples on the tree until the final day, and their people listened. If they are able to bank all these votes and then follow that up by finding plenty of lower-propensity voters, it might make all the difference in a race that all polling shows to be a dead heat.
Despite that polling, the early-vote numbers could be why, this week, a high-level Kamala Harris staffer told NBC that the campaign sees North Carolina “slipping away.”
