by Christopher Cooper
We are still clearing out the dust from the 2024 primary election in North Carolina, but two stories have emerged thus far: voter turnout was down to its lowest level since 2004 and Unaffiliated voters in early voting selected the Republican ballot almost two-thirds of the time--a massive increase for the Republican Party.
While those stories are clear and backed up by turnout as it is usually calculated, those numbers actually overstate turnout because many people engage in what political scientists call ballot-roll off--the practice of filling out the top of the ticket and skipping over offices farther down. As we will see below, ballot roll-off was high in the 2024 primary election, particularly on the Republican ballot. In a few cases, the number of people who rolled-off exceeded the vote martin between the top two candidates!
