Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Some thoughts on Super Tuesday

By Michael Bitzer

So, it's finally here: Super Tuesday, the March 3 primary elections in North Carolina and thirteen other states, especially California and Texas (with bigger Democratic delegations than North Carolina).

As I await the polls closing at 7:30 PM and then see the returns come in, some questions and thoughts about Super Tuesday that I'll be looking for tonight and tomorrow:

Question 1: what is North Carolina's split between early and Election Day results?


Sunday, March 1, 2020

NC's Democratic Primary Early Voters: Diversification in Many Ways

by Michael Bitzer

With Saturday's final day of early voting, it's time to take a deep dive into the data to see who showed up to cast absentee ballots before the "Super Tuesday" March 3rd primary election in the Old North State.

North Carolinians have three main options in casting ballots: absentee by mail, absentee onestop (which is no-excuse early voting in-person), and Election Day voting (including transfers and provisional ballots).

In this year's preliminary total, close to 800,000 ballots were cast in all party primaries through February 29 (over 500,000 of those ballots are in the Democratic primary), and while there will be some "settling" by counties and remaining processing, the following descriptive analysis should give us a sense of who showed up. We'll have to wait until Tuesday (March 3) night, shortly after the polls close at 7:30 PM, to get a sense as to how these early voters decided.