On June 19, 2025, the North Carolina Board of Elections announced that, following North Carolina General Statutes, the Constitution, Justice for All, No Labels, and We the People parties would be terminated and all of the registrants registered with each of those parties would be reassigned to Unaffiliated status on June 24. The Green, Libertarian, Democratic and Republican parties will remain, as will the largest group of registered voters--the Unaffiliated.
As today is the last day of their existence (at least for now--they can always come back in the future--the Jim Palmer of party politics, if you will), it seemed like a good time to take stock of who was registered with these soon to be extinct political parties.
How Many?
The graph below shows each of North Carolina's third parties--No Labels, Constitution, Green, We the People, Justice for All and Libertarian parties. The graph begins at the inception of the No Labels Party. As you can see, the Justice for All, Green, We the People and Constitution parties never achieved even 1/10th of one percent of the overall pool of North Carolina registered voters.
The No Labels party did a bit better in terms of party registration, although questions remain about whether that was because of their message or simply because of their name--No Labels is easily confused with Unaffiliated.
Who?
To invoke a dated Jerry Seinfeld reference--who are these people?
As the table below shows, members of the eliminated parties are, on average, quite a bit younger than members of the "big three"--Republican, Unaffiliated and Democrat.
In terms of race, members of the No Labels, We the People, and Constitution parties are more diverse than Republican of Unaffiliated registrants, but slightly less diverse than Democratic party registrants. Almost 50 percent of the Justice for All party registrants identify as Black--the largest proportion of Black registrants among the nine political parties that were in existence during the 2024 general election in North Carolina.
 |
Turnout
When it comes to voter turnout, the Constitution Party outperformed both Democrats and Unaffiliated registrants in the 2024 general election. We The People, and Justice for All registrants turned out at higher rates than Unaffiliated, and No Labels turnout was lower than all of the "big three."
Getting recognized as a third party in North Carolina (and in most other states) is difficult. Maintaining recognition is ever harder. Winning election? Well, that's darn near impossible.
---
Dr.
Christopher Cooper is the Madison Distinguished Professor of Political
Science & Public Affairs and Director of the Haire Institute for
Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His most recent book is Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer. Chapters 7 and 8 of that book discuss Unaffiliated and third party voters and candidates.
