150K More Republican Ballots Than Democrat in North Carolina: ‘GOP Enthusiasm Way Up’

Despite more registered Democrats in the state.

QUICK FACTS:

• The state of North Carolina saw a huge increase in Republican participation in its primaries earlier in the week, despite the majority of registered voters calling themselves Democrats.
• Roughly 150,000 more Republican ballots were cast than Democrat ballots, according to Breitbart News.
• The Republican vote representation is “86 percent higher than 2018 and nearing 2020 levels,” RNC Deputy National Press Secretary William O’Grady told the publication.
• The southern state is following in the footsteps of its northern counterparts. Pennsylvania, for example, also sees a major uptick in Republican participation.

🐘📈⚡️GOP enthusiasm is way up

With 98% of Pennslyvania primary votes counted, Republicans have HIGHER turnout than Democrats – the first time this has happened in a decade.

With 100% of North Carolina counted, there were nearly 150k more GOP votes cast than Dem votes.

— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) May 18, 2022

ELECTION ANALYSIS FOR THIS WEEK’S VOTE:

• A deeper analysis of the primary election found that 759,554 GOP voters participated in the North Carolina U.S. Senate primary, while only 613,170 Democrats did the same.
• However, incumbent Republican lawmaker Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) and the former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Cheri Beasley (D) took their primaries easily, in largely expected wins, indicating that the increase in turnout wasn’t particularly upsetting to projections of public opinion.
• O’Grady noted that “in counties Biden won in 2020, GOP primary votes were 169,210 or 182 percent higher than in 2018.”
• However, the general election might find the state in for more controversy, since former President Donald Trump won the state in 2020 against now-President Joe Biden by only a narrow margin of 1.3 percent.

As expected, Unaffiliated voter registrants passed Democrats this week to make them the largest group of registrants in NC politics (~7600 more Unaffiliated than Dems). A 🧵#ncpol (1/11)

This was a slow build that picked up momentum recently, as the graph below indicates. pic.twitter.com/vXuEsJUarT

— Chris Cooper (@chriscooperwcu) March 19, 2022

BACKGROUND:

• Republicans and Democrats across the nation are found struggling for the loyalty of moderates, and in North Carolina, that war is going well for Republicans.
• According to recent reports, there was a marked increase in unaffiliated voter participation, both in North Carolina and nationwide, and the independents appear to be leaning to the right.
• A January 2022 Gallup poll  found that near the end of last year the number of Democrat-leaning independent voters decreased by five points, and Republican leaners increased by four points.
• Independent or unaffiliated voters were leaning toward Republican values on key issues for the upcoming election, including the economy, immigration, and education, among other issues.