Who Showed Up for North Carolina's Super Tuesday Primary Election?

By Michael Bitzer

It's been a month since North Carolina held its primary election on Super Tuesday, and the data is finally available for who showed up to cast ballots in the respective party primaries.

In total, the state saw a turnout rate of 31 percent, with over 2.1 million ballots being cast. This is slightly down from the overall 2016 March primary election, where 35 percent of registered voters showed up, casting 2.3 million ballots.

This year's Democratic primary ballots did exceed 2016's numbers: 1.3 million and 1.1 million four years ago. The drop was in Republican primary ballots, not surprising due to a lack of competitive primary at the presidential level.

Out of this year's primary elections in the state's 100 counties, 98 of them appear to have submitted their data for which voters showed up, with which party primary and vote method the voter used in casting a ballot.

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?

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.

It Isn't "The State of the Union," But Rather "The State of the Divide"

by Michael Bitzer

Based on last night's performance of the State of the Union, I have to think that there is a real possibility we have seen the last televised State of the Union (SOTU) before a joint session of Congress when the House of Representatives is controlled by the party opposite the White House.

In other words: another norm broken.

First, some historical & constitutional perspectives about States of the Union.

Article II, Section 3, Clause 3 states “He [the President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient...”

This is the constitutional foundation of the SOTU. Notice there's nothing said about how the "Information on the State of the Union" shall be given. And it's "from time to time"--nothing constitutionally specific there either. 

Analysis of North Carolina State Senate Districts

by Michael Bitzer

In a previous post, I looked at the North Carolina State House of Representatives and the numbers within the new districts, based on a recent redistricting. This post looks at the numbers for the state senate and its districts, utilizing the classification approach and data. 

As a reminder: the classification approach that I take is based on a district's their partisan behavior, meaning the categories use a combination of factors: 

• presidential results within the district; 
• voter registration percentages (party registration and racial demographics) from the January 11, 2020 registration file from the North Carolina State Board of Elections; and,
• the district's 'regionalism,' namely the percentage of registered voters in center cities (urban counties), outside of the center city but still inside an urban county, a surrounding suburban county, or a rural county.

As I showed in the previous post, the relationship between Donald Trump's 2016 vote performance in a district matches up very closely to the Republican candidate's vote performance in the 2018 election:

"Carolina Campaigns" Podcast has its first episode

I'm pleased to announce that I've joined up with Dr. Joe Cabosky for a new podcast on North Carolina politics, campaigns, and elections (along with other topics that come to our minds) called "Carolina Campaigns."

Dr. Cabosky is an assistant professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches market research and case studies, along with conducting research into diversifying and disrupting strategic communications, public relations, and advertising. He writes at cabpolitical.com.

Our podcasts will run every two weeks (or so), and can be found on SoundCloud. Our first episode looks at the Iowa Caucuses a week out, and the political nuances that can be found in North Carolina politics, from both of our points of view and scholarly work. We hope you'll take a listen.

Analysis of North Carolina State House Districts

by Michael Bitzer

With the upcoming North Carolina primary elections on March 3, and with the state legislative and congressional district maps finalized for the 2020 election, here's a look at the North Carolina House of Representatives districts for where things stand at the beginning of the year, and the possible classifications for each district come November.

My approach to classifying districts is based on their partisan behavior, meaning the categories use a combination of factors: presidential results within the district; voter registration percentages (party registration and racial demographics) from the January 11, 2020 registration file from the North Carolina State Board of Elections; and the district's 'regionalism,' namely the percentage of registered voters in center cities (urban counties), outside of the center city but still inside an urban county, a surrounding suburban county, or a rural county.

First, to give a sense of how the four regions performed as a whole in the 2016 presidential election, this chart gives the four regions and their state-wide performances:

NC Voters Since 2016: Younger, More Diverse, Much More Unaffiliated

by Michael Bitzer

With the prior post regarding the end of the 2019 year analysis of North Carolina registered voters, I decided to look at the new voters who registered since the last presidential election in 2016 to see what kind of patterns we might see since the last presidential battle in the Old North State.

Since 2016, over 1.3 million new voters have registered in North Carolina (20 percent of the current 6.8 million active/inactive/temporary registered voters), with unaffiliated status claiming 43 percent of these new voters, Democrats claiming 30 percent of the new registrants, and Republicans taking 26 percent. All other party registrations--Libertarian, Green, and Constitution--totaled one percent.

2019 Year in Review of NC's Registered Voters

by Michael Bitzer

With the end of 2019 comes a status report of where North Carolina stands in terms of voter registration and the patterns that we have seen over the past year, based on data from the NC State Board of Elections.

With the January 5, 2019 count of registered voters (active, inactive, and temporary status) compared to the December 28 count, North Carolina's voter pool saw a net increase of 273,238 voters, or four percent, at the end of 2019. Of the state's one hundred counties, all but two saw net increases in their voter rolls: Montgomery and Yancey counties saw declines in their total voters.

As expected, the major urban counties saw their numbers increase the most: Mecklenburg (home to Charlotte) saw a net increase of 34,314; Wake (with Raleigh), a net increase of 32,703; Guilford (with Greensboro), a net increase of 11,329; and Cumberland (with Fayetteville), a net increase of 10,301.

Are NC "Suburbs" Trending Like National Suburbs?

With the analysis settling on the 2019 odd-year elections, the national narrative appears to be focused on the suburban swings against the GOP and towards the Democrats. And in the 2019 general election in North Carolina's Ninth Congressional District, the 'swing' seemed to be more dichotomous in the 'suburbs.' More on that later.

First, an assumption: it is popularly imagined about the differences between 'urban' versus 'rural' areas of our nation and state. For example, an urban county contains a densely-populated central city (Mecklenburg County with Charlotte, Wake County with Raleigh), while 'rural' designates an area beyond a metropolitan area of the urban and surrounding suburbs, typically with low population density. Those are easily envisioned in their characteristics, and even more so nowadays in their 'political behavior.'

It's when you get into the 'suburbs' that popular conceptions of that type of region come into some potential differences. In my analyses, I rely on the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's 2017's classification of metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs. These MSAs designated a central city, surrounded by counties that are connected with the central city (surrounding suburban counties). Then, whatever counties are left, are considered 'rural' (and yes, there are micropolitan statistical areas, but I leave that for future analyses).