North Carolina breaks turnout record on first day of early voting

North Carolinians set a record on the first day of early voting in the state, casting 353,166 ballots on Thursday and becoming the second battleground state this week to top its previous mark.

Voting proceeded at a brisk pace despite the carnage from Hurricane Helene, which devastated the western part of the state late last month. The state was able to open 76 polling sites across the 25 counties declared federal disaster areas, only four fewer than planned.

The first-day totals in North Carolina, released by the state Board of Elections on Friday morning, only slightly bested the first-day numbers in 2020, near the height of the coronavirus pandemic. But Thursday’s figure blew past that of other recent election years.

Earlier in the week, Georgia doubled its day one record, and early voting remained robust through the week. As of Friday morning, more than 960,000 Georgia voters had cast ballots since early in-person voting began Tuesday — nearly 20 percent of the total number who voted in 2020 and more than double the number who had voted during the same period four years ago.

The numbers suggest voter enthusiasm — at least among some — is high in both states, though it is difficult to know how much they show beyond that. Former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are polling neck-in-neck in both Georgia and North Carolina, either of which could be decisive in determining who wins the White House.

Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College, said early voting showed an equal number of Democrats and Republicans cast ballots on Thursday, a dramatic change from 2020, when more Democrats took advantage of early voting on the first day.

“There’s a great deal of interest in both sides of the aisle,” Bitzer said. “The great unknown is what are the unaffiliateds doing. We don’t have a good sense of where they may be landing in all of this.”

In 2020, Trump beat Biden in North Carolina by fewer than 80,000 votes, his smallest margin of victory in any state. In Georgia, Biden prevailed by an even narrower margin, which Trump contested.

Republicans have made a concerted push to encourage their voters to cast ballots early or by mail even as Trump has continued to baselessly undermine the legitimacy of both methods.

In North Carolina, where nearly two-thirds tend to vote early, an additional 73,133 ballots have been cast by mail. Other key battlegrounds have already seen large numbers of mail-in ballots, including 857,270 in Michigan, 690,891 in Pennsylvania, 283,123 in Wisconsin and 172,145 in Arizona, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

Early in-person voting kicks off in parts of Michigan on Saturday, including Detroit. Harris and Trump were both campaigning in the area on Friday, and Harris was expected to hold another event in Detroit on Saturday.