NC Early Voting Day 4: African American Turnout Doubles White GOP Turnout Sunday
Sunday, October 21 was another big day for African American voter turnout in North Carolina. 10,188 African Americans voted Sunday in NC, many of them after church as part of the "souls to the polls" movement. In comparison, only 4,980 White Republicans voted Sunday in NC. Overall, Sunday turnout was (at least) 24,357, whereas in 2008 it was 15,083, meaning that Sunday turnout was up (at least) 61.5% over 2008 levels. These numbers may go up as more counties report their totals.
It seems that White Evangelicals in NC may not be all that enthusiastic about voting for Mitt Romney, at least in comparison to the enthusiasm African American voters in NC feel about voting for Barack Obama. Billy Graham has taken out ads trying to motivate the religious right to "Vote for Biblical values" (apparently that is supposed to mean voting for Mitt Romney). But if that has prompted some sort of religious right voting wave, it is doing an excellent job of camouflaging itself in the early voting statistics. On Sunday, African American turnout in NC was more than double White Republican turnout.
Overall, early vote turnout is now up by 38.0% in NC above where it was at the same time in 2008. Yesterday it was up by 36.6%, but more votes from previous days keep trickling in from slow reporting counties. As a result, Obama's vote margins keep improving from previous days.
Projecting based off of demographics and party registration (for example, giving Obama 99% of the votes cast by African American Democrats and giving Romney 96% of the votes cast by White Republicans), President Obama is ahead in NC by something like 271,155 votes to 218,800 votes, which equals a margin of 52,355 total votes. Just so that nobody misunderstands, these vote numbers are estimates, not actual vote totals. For methodological details, see my Day 1 Diary.
In 2008, at this same time in the early voting period, Obama was up by about 203,552 to 148,968 over John McCain, which is a margin of 54,584 total votes. So it appears that Obama is in about the same position as he was in 2008 in terms of vote margin, but turnout among both Democrats and Republicans is a heck of a lot higher.
Of course, this avalanche of early voting is not a unique event occurring only in North Carolina. The same thing is happening across the country, especially in swing states where OFA's unprecedented ground game is deployed, like Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Colorado. The only difference is that the data released in NC is more detailed than in other states, so we can see with more clarity how early voting is playing out.
click here for entire report from a Daily Kos Diary as well as colorful charts:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/22/1147893/-NC-Early-Voting-Day-4-African-American-Turnout-Doubles-White-GOP-Turnout-Sunday
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