Friday, August 5, 2016

Analysis of NC Registered Voter Pool as of July 30, 2016

With the weekly data file from the NC State Board of Elections, 6,642,234 North Carolinians are active/inactive registered voters, as of July 30, 2016. This represents a 4.7 percent increase over the same point four years ago in the 2012 presidential election.

Some breakdowns of these 6.6 million registered North Carolina voters so far; first, the party break downs of active and inactive voters: 40 percent Democratic, 30 percent Republican, 29 percent unaffiliated, and 1 percent Libertarians. Within the party registration, the percentages of active and inactive voters for North Carolina Registered Voters are:


Next, breaking the state-wide voter registration pool into urban, suburban, and rural counties and then into party registration, one can see the Democratic tendencies of urban counties, while suburban counties are more Republican in nature than the state, as are rural counties.


However, it's important to note that 54 percent of NC registered voters are in urban counties, as defined by the Office of Management & Budget.

The other major shift occurring in North Carolina is a generational shift among the voters.


Baby Boomers (those born between 1945 and 1965) are slightly over a third of the voters, while Millennial voters (those born after 1981) are soon to be 30 percent, and most likely might equal Baby Boomers by November's general election. A key thing to remember among the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers (particularly those who are native North Carolinians): registered Democrats in these generations, especially those in rural counties, are more likely to be reliable Republican voters who simply haven't formally switched their party affiliation.

So far, 59 percent of the new voters who registered since January 1, 2016 are Millennials:



Among North Carolina voters, we tend to see a gender gap developing between women (who make up 53 percent of the pool) and men.


Millennial voters, who only 25 percent are registered with the GOP, see a disparity between men and women, but both are seemingly rejecting the Republican Party as a registration option.


Then, breaking down the party registrations by race and ethnicity indicates that the North Carolina Democratic Party (by voter registration) is officially a majority-minority party, with only 47 percent of registered Democrats being non-Hispanic/Latino white.


Finally, among North Carolina's 147,990 registered Hispanic/Latino voters (2 percent of the total state pool), the party break-downs and by generation show another troubling trend for Republicans:


I'll be tracking September's beginning data file for tracking how these numbers change.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Democrats look to gain after court derails GOP voting law

Was interviewed about the recent 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling striking down GOP voting law changes, which will appear to favor Democrats come November if the ruling stands.

Gov. McCrory vs. AG Cooper over who should defend HB2

Was interviewed for a WCNC story on the continuing feud between NC's Governor Pat McCrory and AG Roy Cooper in their election battle for the governorship of the state.