Some thoughts on NC Legislative Battles Shaping Up on Nov. 6

With today's release of a new Meredith College Poll, they find that both congressional and state legislative generic ballot questions have Democrats favored by 10 points over Republicans.

This is certainly an eye-popping number, and may reflect the Democratic enthusiasm level (on a scale of 1-10, probably safe to say a 12), but Democrats are facing two important barriers to their blue wave in a blue-moon election cycle in the Old North State.

First, in North Carolina and in the nation, Republicans have had historical advantages when it comes to voter turnout. In a previous post, I noted the turnout rates of registered voters, by party registration, in North Carolina's past elections, going back to the 2002 mid-terms:

One Week To Go

We're now down to the wire when it comes to 2018's mid-term election, and we're at 5 days left in North Carolina's early voting period (which ends this coming Saturday).

Here's the latest numbers (that were also posted to Twitter at @oldnorthstpol) for today's numbers of early votes, through October 29, 2018.

We're now at 1.3 million requested ballots and 1.2 million returned & accepted ballots, for both mail and in-person (onestop) absentee ballots:

A few recent media appearances

It's the busy time of the season for most political scientists and analysts, and this year has almost felt like a presidential year in terms of media requests.

Was fortunate to join some distinguished political science colleagues (David McLennan at Meredith University; Jason Husser at Elon University; Chris Cooper at Western Carolina University) on NC Spin to digest (in a spirited fashion) the 2018 mid-terms as we enter the homestretch.

Also, I joined the Long Leaf Pine podcast to talk about early voting so far in NC. 

Understanding NC's Politics: Past Registered Voter Turnout Rates

As we finalize this mid-term election with the last week of early voting in-person and the big day coming on November 6, it may be helpful to understand what the past trends have been for registered voter turnout, but it's important to note that this may not necessarily help us understand what 2018's turnout will be.

As evident in the early voting, we're nearing 20 percent turnout so far of the 7 million plus registered voters.

For an overview, the past trends of North Carolina's registered voter turnout rate shows the ups of a presidential year and the drop in a mid-term year (data from the NC State Board of Elections' website):