As of today's data file by the North Carolina State Board of Elections, 19,274 ballots have been requested for the general election, an increase of 6 percent over yesterday's totals.
Registered Democrats continue their lead of requested ballots, at 41% to registered GOP voters at 36%, with registered unaffiliated voters at 24%. In terms of percentage increases from yesterday, registered Republicans are cutting into the Democrat's lead, with an increase of 7% for GOP requests compared to an increase of 5% for Democrats; unaffiliated requests increased 6%.
Female voters are 55% of the requested ballots, with white voters at 83% and black voters at 12%.
Of the 3,490 ballots that have been returned and accepted as votes (18% of the requested number), 45% of them are from registered Democrats, 35% from registered Republicans, and 20% from registered unaffiliated voters.
Women are 53% of the returned and accepted ballots, while white voters are 81% and black voters are 14% of the accepted ballots.
While we have to be careful of 'assuming' these are locked in votes for either party, it has generally been accepted assumptions that self-identified Republicans will vote 92-95% of the time for their party's candidates, while (nationally, at least) self-identified Democrats will vote at the same margin for their candidates. It is important to note, however, that among older registered Democrats in the Old North State, they belong to a special class of voters: while they may still be registered Democrats, many of them who live in the rural parts of the state are really Republican voters (a legacy of the old-time conservative Southern Democrat strain who realigned themselves to voting Republican). The average age of the returned and accepted ballots so far is 64 years old.
Still, as I've indicated before, mail-in balloting has traditionally been a Republican-favored voting method, so with all of the above said, it should be cautiously optimistic that Democrats have the advantage so far.
