Monday, September 12, 2022

The 2022 Election: An Overview of NC's Voter Pool and the U.S. Senate Contest

By Michael Bitzer

With North Carolina having sent out its absentee by mail ballots (and the first ballots in the nation submitted the next day), we start the final leg of this mid-term election, culminating on November 8, 2022 and the county, and then state, certification of the official results for this mid-term election.

Along with my other colleagues, we will have a series of analyses regarding the major contests coming up for the Old North State to decide this fall: from the US Senate and US House contests, to the state legislative and supreme court races. In each, we hope to give some analysis of where things stand in terms of the voter pool, what we have seen in the past in various contests in terms of electoral turnout dynamics, and how this mid-term election may be shaping up.

In this piece, I'll take a look at the overall potential electorate--the registered voter pool as of September 6, 2022--and how it might shape the state-wide dynamics, especially the U.S. Senate contest that has stabilized into one of the most competitive contests, but up to this point seemingly a second-tier battle by the national media.

NC Enters 2022's Election with 7.3 Million Potential Voters