By Michael Bitzer
Before a single Election Day ballot is cast, North Carolina’s 2026 primary has already told us something important.
Early voting totals have surpassed both the 2022 midterm primary and the 2024 presidential primary at the same point in the calendar. That alone makes this cycle notable. But the real story is not simply about aggregate numbers — it is about who is voting, which ballot they are pulling, and how those choices compare to recent cycles.
The top-line figure suggests heightened engagement. Yet beneath that surface lies a far more revealing set of dynamics: a Democratic primary outperforming recent benchmarks, an unusually strong Unaffiliated tilt toward the Democratic ballot, and a geographic pattern that reinforces the state’s now-familiar urban–suburban–rural divide.
The question now is not whether early voting was strong. It was. The question is what these patterns signal about overall turnout — and whether Election Day reinforces or rebalances what early voting has already revealed.
The 2026 primary has exceeded the last mid-term’s early votes (2022) and the most recent presidential primary (2024) in terms of accepted early ballots, cast by mail and in-person.1 The numbers will continue to adjust with continued processing by the 100 counties, but as we head into Election Day, the biggest question is where do we end up when the polls close Tuesday night.
Overall, NC’s 2026 early votes are three percent ahead of the final tally for 2024, and 24 percent ahead of 2022’s final totals.
But the trend-line noted at the 10-day mark continued unabated based on party primary ballots.
The Republican Party primary ballots fell behind their same day totals for 2024 and were only four percent ahead of the 2022 primary. But Democratic Party primary ballots were 32 and 43 percent ahead of 2024 and 2022, respectively—even exceeding the contested Republican Party presidential primary numbers from two years ago.
Within both party’s primaries, we see the split between partisan registered voters (Democrats and Republicans) versus the Unaffiliated voters.
Historically, North Carolina’s Unaffiliated voters behave strategically in primaries, mostly gravitating toward the more competitive or higher-profile contest. This year, however, more Unaffiliateds pulled the Democratic primary ballot than the Republican, 56 percent to 44 percent. This year’s tilt toward the Democratic ballot breaks from that familiar pattern.
The Democratic primary attracted about 26,000 more Unaffiliateds than the Republican primary, and with a little less than 96,000 more registered Democrats early voting than registered Republicans. Of course, we’ll need Election Day numbers to see how this ultimately breaks down for the overall primary electorate.
Across North Carolina, a slightly familiar pattern of one party over the other in terms of early ballots being cast in the counties is notable:
As expected, major urban counties (Mecklenburg, Durham, Wake) have a greater Democratic percentage of ballots, along with the upper-eastern Black-Belt region of the state. What is interesting is the lower-eastern Black-Belt region (Anson to Robeson counties) is also more Democratic than Republican. This stretch of South Carolina-border counties have been trending more Republican in recent general elections.
In the end, both parties saw a relatively balanced division between partisan registered voters and Unaffiliateds in their early ballots pool:
Another similarity between the two parties was that both pulled about the same percentage of “consistent party primary voters” (41 percent of each party’s total), meaning these early voters cast a ballot in 2020, 2022, and 2024 in the same party primary as they did this year.
Most likely, the 60,000 Unaffiliated ‘consistent’ voters functionally behave as partisans, repeatedly choosing the same party’s primary ballot over several cycles (a variety of reasons for this, including their county is heavily to one party that dominates, or they really are partisans in disguise as Unaffiliateds). But this year’s 145K Democratic consistent voters versus the nearly 90K Republican consistent voters who cast an early ballot is something of note—again, Tuesday will determine the definite analysis.
What Can NC’s Early Vote Totals Tell Us About Overall Primary Turnout?
The big question at this point is: what will the overall turnout rate be, when we finish the voting on Tuesday? In 2022, the overall turnout rate was barely 20 percent statewide, while 2024 saw about a quarter of the state’s registered voter pool cast ballots.
This year, 22 percent of the early ballots cast came from voters who voted on Election Day in 2024’s primary, with Republicans seeing a quarter of their 2026 ballots come from those Election Day voters two years ago and Democrats having just two-out-of-ten.
If a significant share of habitual Election Day voters have already shifted to early voting, the final Tuesday surge may be more muted than in past cycles.
Who Are The 2026 Early Primary Voters?
The final numbers of NC early accepted ballots seems to confirm the trendlines over the in-person early voting period: more White and Black than the overall voter registration pool, older, and overall balanced among the state’s regions (though partisanship creates a very different distribution).
As the trends developed over early voting, the racial partisan divide is clearly evident, with 56 percent of White non-Hispanics pulling the GOP ballot versus all other races pulling the Democratic ballot.
For age, older voters still dominated the early voting pool:
And among generational cohorts, Boomers & Silent generation voters were 63 percent of the early votes cast and accepted, while those under the age of 45 (Millennials and Gen Z) are 16 percent.
While the state’s regional early vote distribution tends to mirror the state-wide registration dynamic, each party pulled from their respective ‘partisan base region’: Democrats from central cities, Republicans from the surrounding suburban counties.
This is reflected in each region’s partisan primary ballot distribution: heavily Democratic in urban counties, heavily Republican in surrounding suburban and rural counties.
This geographic polarization that defines North Carolina general elections appears to be playing out in structuring its primaries.
Early voting in North Carolina’s 2026 primary offers strong signals — but not definitive answers.
Democrats appear to have generated disproportionate early energy, both among registered partisans and among Unaffiliated voters. The fact that more than half of Unaffiliated voters chose the Democratic ballot — reversing the traditional “go where the action is” pattern — is one of the cycle’s most intriguing developments. Whether that reflects competitive dynamics, ideological sorting, or strategic crossover voting will require deeper post-election analysis.
At the same time, the electorate remains structurally familiar: older voters dominate participation, regional partisan strongholds remain intact, and consistent primary voters form a large share of the early vote. In other words, while there are signs of enthusiasm shifts, there is no wholesale reshaping of the primary electorate — at least not yet.
Ultimately, Tuesday’s turnout will determine whether early voting was a leading indicator of higher overall engagement or simply a redistribution of when ballots were cast. If Election Day participation mirrors recent midterm patterns, 2026 could land between the low-turnout 2022 primary and the slightly more robust 2024 presidential cycle. If the total numbers surge past 2024’s total, then the early vote may prove to have been the opening chapter of a more energized electorate.
For now, the numbers suggest something subtle but meaningful: not a political earthquake — but a detectable shift in energy. And in a closely divided state like North Carolina, shifts in partisan energy often matter more than shifts in registration.
For more analysis on NC’s upcoming primary election—and well beyond—make sure to subscribe to my colleague Dr. Christopher Cooper’s “Anatomy of a Purple State” Substack for his insights and takeaways on all things #ncpol.
