What struck me was the dominance, this early, by urban county voters using mail-in balloting.
Of the nearly 61,000 requested ballots so far, urban county voters make up 63 percent of the requested ballots, with suburban county voters 17 percent and rural county voters 20 percent.
Here are the party registration percentages for each region:
If one was to make an 'educated guess' about these trends, urban Democrats are most likely pure-party loyalists, meaning that they will likely vote for their party's nominee. Conversely, the legacy of native, rural, conservative Southern Democrats who may be registered Democratic are more likely to be Republican voters. However, the impact of non-native North Carolinians could give more of a sense of 'party-loyalty' based on voter registration (a big if, mind you).
One more set of analysis was the number of native North Carolinians compared against non-native born voters, split by region:
Non-native North Carolinians are two-thirds of the requested 61,000 mail-in ballots so far, and are nearly 70 percent of the urban county voters requesting ballots. Not surprising is that the closest 'region' based on native vs. non-native are rural counties.
Two more: here is the breakdown by generations and regions:
And then by party registrations and regions for native vs. non-native NC voters who have requested mail-in ballots:
It will be interesting to see if this trend of non-native North Carolinians continues at such a high percentage over the next few weeks.
I'll post something tomorrow morning before taking the weekend off and be back on Tuesday with Monday's requests and processing.
