Early voting has concluded for the 2nd primary in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. Although mail-in ballots will continue to be counted and accepted through election day, this seems like a good time to stop and take stock of the “early” vote in the 11th (defined for this piece as all votes accepted through the last day of in-person early voting). In addition to additional mail-in votes, there will almost certainly be some slight adjustment to the overall numbers in the coming days.
Other than a brief reminder of the candidates (Madison
Cawthorn and Lynda Bennett) and their home counties (Henderson and Haywood,
respectively), I’ll leave a detailed description of the players and the
circumstances out of this one. If you want to catch-up, I’ve included some more
description in my first
post for Old North State (along with links to coverage from local and
national journalists). I also wrote an entry
for the London School of Economics American Politics blog that summarizes many
of the players and events and an article in yesterday's Asheville
Citizen Times that describes why this election is so important. Since those
pieces posted, Chris Cioffi had a helpful article
in Roll Call and Kyle Perrotti of the Waynesville
Mountaineer and Gary Robertson of the AP posted good preview articles.
On to what we know thus far:
Early Turnout by Date
& Time
Just shy of 16,000 (15,816) ballots were accepted in the
early voting period. 14,548 of these
ballots were in-person, one-stop votes, while 1,268 (~8% of the total) were
mail-in votes. In terms of daily voting, in-person votes ranged from a low of
980 on June 12 to a high of 1,734 on June 19. Mail-in votes, on the other hand,
ranged from a low of 1 to a high of 172 (on June 15).
How Does This Compare
to the First Primary?
In the first Republican primary, 35,428 in person, early
votes and 1,100 mail-in votes were accepted, meaning that the in person-early
vote in the 2nd primary was ~41% of the in person early vote in the 1st primary. We expect much
lower turnout in a 2nd primary than in a first primary; if these patterns hold
through election day, this will represent higher turnout than many observers (including
me) predicted.
Mail-in voting exceeded mail-in voting in the 1st
primary by 168 votes—and that’s with a few days of mail-in still to be counted,
and in the context of an election where overall turnout is less than half of
what it was in the 1st primary. While the mail-in vote will not come close to
the 40% mark that some had anticipated, it is a significant increase over
mail-in voting in the first primary, and may suggest something important for
how ballots will be cast in November.
Who Turned Out to
Vote Early?
As the table below suggests, people who turned out early
were similar to those who voted in the first primary in terms of their age,
race, sex, and party affiliation. Obviously, we don’t know whether their vote
choice will vary, but we can say that the types of people who voted in the 2nd
primary are demographically similar to those who voted in the first primary.
Accepted Republican Balloting in NC11 in the 1st & 2nd
Primary
|
||||
Mail
1st Primary
|
Mail
2nd Primary
|
In
Person Early 1st Primary
|
In
Person Early 2nd Primary
|
|
Avg age
|
70
|
71
|
63
|
64
|
% Accepted
|
86
|
94
|
99
|
99
|
% White
|
95
|
97
|
97
|
97
|
% Female
|
56
|
56
|
50
|
51
|
% Republican
|
76
|
73
|
72
|
74
|
% Unaffiliated
|
24
|
27
|
28
|
26
|
*percentages are rounded. 1st R results are all mail-in. 2nd
include all one-stop & mail-in through 6/21
|
||||
How many
repeat-customers?
Another way to understand who voted early in the second
primary is to determine what percentage of the 2nd primary early
electorate voted in the first primary. Here, it appears that 91% of the 2nd
early primary voters were repeat customers—folks who voted in the first and
second primary. Repeat customers were significantly older, less likely to be
female, less likely to vote by mail and more likely to be Republicans than
their counterparts who voted in the 2nd, but not the first primary
(I’ll call those “Newbies”). Perhaps most importantly, Newbies were more than
twice as likely to use vote-by-mail than repeat customers. The increase in
vote-by-mail, therefore does not simply represent people shifting how they
vote, but rather a method that is bringing in a small, but potentially important
number of new voters.
Comparing Repeat
Customers to Newbies
|
||
Repeat Customers
|
Newbies
|
|
Avg. age
|
75
|
71
|
% White
|
98
|
97
|
% Female
|
51
|
56
|
% Republican
|
75
|
71
|
% Unaffiliated
|
25
|
30
|
% Mail
|
7%
|
15%
|
Examining just the repeat customers, it appears that less
than half (40%) of the people who voted by mail in the second primary also
voted by mail in the first primary. By contrast, 75% of the repeat customers
who used in-person one-stop in the 2nd primary also used it in the 1st
primary.
Where was Turnout
Highest?
We don’t know how individual voters voted, so the best sense
we have of who’s turning out their voters is to attempt to read the tea leaves
of geography. This is a bit fraught, as we can’t infer individual votes from
county-level voter history. Nonetheless, the geography of turnout gives us the
best possible sense of who’s turning out their potential voters.
One way to understand the geography of turnout is to compare
the early and absentee turnout in the second primary in a county, to the early
and absentee turnout in the first primary. So, if a county had 60 early and absentee
voters in the first primary and 30 early and absentee voters in the second
primary, that (fictitious) county would have 50% of the turnout in the second
primary as they did in the first primary.
As the figure below suggests, Macon County experienced the highest relative
early and absentee turnout, compared to the first primary, followed by
Henderson, Transylvania, and Polk Counties. It is important to remember that Henderson
is Cawthorn’s home county and geographic base, and Cawthorn also won Polk in
the first primary. Transylvania County was won by Bennett in the first primary
and Macon was won in the first primary by Jim Davis.
While the above graph interesting and potentially important,
it ignores the size of the potential electorate. For example, while the
increase in Polk is indeed important, it ignores the size of the Polk
electorate, which is small, compared to other counties in the region. The next
graph provides a different window into the geography of turnout by including
information for both the percent of the early electorate that hails from each
county, as well as the percent of the potential electorate (Republican voters +
Unaffiliated voters who voted in the Republican first Primary or did not vote
in the first Primary) from each county.
While the data are sliced differently in this graph, the
message is similar: Henderson and Macon counties are overperforming by virtually
any metric. Buncombe, a county which Cawthorn barely won, however, is
underperforming, relative to potential turnout.
Caveats Abound
Now for the boring, but important caveats: everything that is described above above is only early and absentee balloting through June 21, 2020. More
mail-in votes will come in and even the in-person early voting will likely have
small adjustments. In addition, and most importantly, we don’t know what will
happen on election day. We can make some estimates based on previous elections,
but given the state of the race and the state of the world, predicting turnout on election
day is anybody's guess. Finally, although we can make some educated
guesses about what this all means (and I will below), we have no idea how any
individual voted and we could very well be surprised when the votes are counted.
What Might it All
Mean?
With the caveats out there, here are some early thoughts
about what this all might mean:
1)
The increase in mail-in balloting is real: While
it won’t approach the numbers that some had suggested, mail-in voting is indeed
up in this second runoff. Election officials need to plan for increased mail-in
moving forward, and political observers (myself included) need to be prepared
for election nights that might begin to resemble election fortnights as ballots
continue to come in.
2)
This race is likely to be close: there’s good
news in these data for both candidates: clearly the robust turnout in Henderson
County is a good sign for Madison Cawthorn. With that said, increased turnout
in Henderson County won’t be enough to win this election. In fact, if we simulate
the election results with current county-level turnout patterns and assume that
all votes that went to anyone other than Bennett or Cawthorn in the first
primary are split evenly between the two, Bennett would still win handily. Clearly that assumption is unrealistic, but it
reveals the fact that in order for Cawthorn to pull of an upset victory, he needs
to increase turnout in his geographic base and
persuade voters who previously supported other candidates to vote for him.
Lower than expected turnout in Buncombe County is also likely good news for
Bennett.
3)
Macon County may be the key: Macon County
turnout is higher than anticipated, but I’m not sure who this benefits. On the one
hand, Bennett performed much better than Cawthorn in Macon in the first primary,
therefore this could be good for Bennett. On the other hand, Jim Davis, not
Lynda Bennett won Macon County in the first primary. Whether Davis’ voters end
up going for Bennett or Cawthorn may very well decide this election.
What’s to Come
Election Day is Tuesday, June 23. I’ll post a final update
on this primary as soon as I can get the data together after election day. That
update will also include some comparisons to the last time we had a second
primary in the 11th—a primary that was won by a political newcomer
named Mark Meadows.
----
Chris
Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public
Affairs at Western Carolina University. He tweets @chriscooperwcu and can be
contacted by email at ccooper@email.wcu.edu.
