By Michael Bitzer
With North Carolina's start to early in-person voting (what has traditionally been referred to as "Absentee OneStop" since voters could both register to vote and cast their ballot in a one-stop process), past trends might give us a sense of what we could expect over the next few weeks leading up to the March 5th primary election day.
In calculating the below charts for the 2016, 2020, and 2022 primary elections, I relied on the NC State Board of Elections "voter history" data files that keeps a record of the vote method and party primary that voters cast their ballots in.
In pulling this information together, I decided against using 2018's primary election, as it was a 'blue-moon' election cycle with no major state-wide contest on the ballot (no presidential contest, for example, nor a U.S. Senate contest). With this year's presidential primary contest, I'm looking at the past two presidential primaries and the most recent mid-term U.S. Senate primary election (2022).
