Map Shows North Carolina Counties Leading Turnout as Early Voting Begins

North Carolina broke its record for highest turnout on the first day of early voting on Thursday, despite setbacks from Hurricane Helene last month.
Hurricane Helene caused widespread damage to the western regions of North Carolina at the end of September, sparking concerns about potential disruptions to early voting and the November 5 election. Local and state election officials have spent the last several weeks focusing on quickly getting early voting up and running in the areas hit hardest, despite the storm washing away much of the region’s infrastructure.
Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, told reporters on Thursday that 76 of the 80 voting sites in the 25 counties included in the Helene disaster area opened on Thursday.
“This is an incredible accomplishment. It is a realization of one of my favorite election sayings. When a disaster strikes, we don’t stop elections. We figure out how to proceed,” she said.
North Carolina is a battleground state in the presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, where polls show the two candidates nearly evenly split. FiveThirtyEight’s polling average showed Trump with a 0.9 point lead over Harris, compared to Harris’ 0.1 point lead one month earlier on September 18.
Voters in the state are also deciding on their next governor in the race between Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, as well as myriad local races across the state.
In total, 353,166 people voted on the first day of early voting across the state, eclipsing the 348,559 people who voted on the first day of early voting in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic made early voting more popular than in previous years, the board of elections announced on Friday.
Sixty-five percent of 2020 voters either voted either early or by mail in 2020, according to the board of elections.
This map shows the percentage of registered voters in each county who have already voted, either in-person on Thursday or via absentee ballot.
it is difficult to discern clear patterns and trends from just one day of early voting, Steven Greene, a professor of political science at North Carolina State University, told Newsweek.
“There’s always people out there opining on what the early vote means, but I’ve yet to see any scholarship or research that suggests that there are clear patterns and lessons we can take from the early vote,” he said.
Analysis of early voting data may be especially “fraught” this year because the 2020 election was “extremely unusual due to the ongoing COVID pandemic and therefore makes comparisons particularly problematic,” he said.
“The massive investment of resources by both campaigns in North Carolina is almost sure to result in higher turnout. We know from political science research that great party mobilization efforts and close races—and we have both—are strongly associated with higher turnout,” he said.
Greene said he expects turnout to continue to be high this year in North Carolina, as it has never been “quite so targeted a state from both campaigns.”
Some of the counties most heavily affected by Hurricane Helene did see a smaller percentage of its registered voters cast a ballot on the first day of early voting, but thousands of residents in these counties still made it to the polls, according to data released by the board of elections.
Buncombe County—home to Asheville, the largest city in Western North Carolina that was hit especially hard—saw only 3.83 percent of its voters participate on the first day of early voting, according to the data. Only Hyde County, a coastal county, saw a lower percentage rate at 3.39 percent.
Brinson Bell said during the Thursday press conference that election officials have been working to ensure all voters in the region are able to cast a ballot. This has meant coordinating with FEMA, North Carolina Emergency Management and the National Guard to bring in restrooms, generators and internet to counties that needed them for early voting sites.
They have been reaching voters living on roads where ballots are unable to be delivered to inform them of their other voting options, she said. Officials are also working to secure tentlike structures for areas where entire buildings are unusable or were washed away during flooding caused by the hurricane, which killed at least 95 people in the state, according to The News & Observer.
“I know that thousands of North Carolinians lost so much in this storm. Their lives will never be the same after this tragedy. One thing Helene did not take from Western North Carolinians is the right to vote in this important election that will help determine who will lead this local area, this state and this country in the coming years,” Brinson Bell said.
Newsweek reached out to the North Carolina State Board of Elections for comment via email.
Two of the largest counties in the state, where turnout will be critical for Democrats, are Mecklenburg and Wake counties, home to Charlotte and Raleigh. In Mecklenburg County, 4.42 percent of registered voters have turned in their ballots, while 4.9 percent have done so in Wake.
President Joe Biden won Mecklenburg by 35 points and Wake by nearly 27 points in 2020. Nearly 20 percent of the early vote so far has come from those two counties alone, as they are more populated than other, more rural areas in the state.
Union County and Johnston counties, which contain Charlotte and Raleigh suburbs, are two of the largest Republican strongholds in the state. They have seen 5.44 percent and 6.78 percent of their registered voters cast a ballot so far respectively.
Trump won both Union and Johnston counties by 24 points four years ago.
Washington County, a rural area in the easternmost part of the state, had the highest turnout so far, with 8.62 percent of its registered voters casting a vote. It voted for Biden by 10 points in 2020.
There have been signs that Democrats outpace Republicans in early voting across the country, but there’s still time for turnout to change before Election Day. In 2020, Democrats were more likely to vote early and by mail, while votes on Election Day skewed toward Republicans.
In 2020, Trump won the Tar Heel State by 1.3 points (49.9 percent to 48.6 percent), and North Carolina is the only Trump-won state viewed as a serious battleground in the 2024 race.
In the gubernatorial race, Stein is viewed as a favorite following reports from CNN about a series of social media posts Robinson allegedly calling himself a “Black Nazi,” praising Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf and fondly recalling “peeping” on women in bathrooms. Robinson has denied that he was behind these posts.
The state has backed the Republican candidate for president in every election since 1976, except for 2008 when President Barack Obama won. But, North Carolina has elected a Democratic governor in 7 of the last 8 gubernatorial contests.