Jody Billiard

🇺🇸🗳️ 16-Oct North Carolina Early Voting Update: Day One, and It's Bad for Republicans 🗳️ In-person early voting opened yesterday. I've been saying early in-person voting where the real signal starts. It started, and it's bad for Republicans. The DataRepublican NC map now defaults to all early voting (mail + in person) against the same point in 2022. It updates every morning. Benchmark first: at this point in 2022, the early vote was D+13. It finished D+7, and Republicans still won every statewide race. A Democratic lead in the early vote is normal. What matters is how big the lead is compared with 2022. Day 1 in person, against Day 1 in 2022: 🔵 D+27.6 (2022: D+6.0, 2024: D+1.5) 🔵 That's a 21.6-point shift toward Democrats All early voting so far, mail + in person, against the same point in 2022 (19 days out): 🔴 R share: −9.1 🔵 D share: +5.1 🟡 I share: +4.0 Raw D–R margin: 🔵+14.2 shift toward Democrats (D+27.4, against D+13.2) With independents split by each county's R/D ratio: 🔵+22.2 (D+40.8, against D+18.6) Raw counts so far (2022 same point in brackets): 🔴 R : 46,341 [54,195] 🔵 D : 111,482 [79,117] 🟡 I : 79,716 [56,063] 🟡 I leaning 🔴 R: 23,954 🟡 I leaning 🔵 D: 55,762 Turnout is up 25% over 2022 overall and up 47% for in person alone. Republicans are the only group that went down. Republican in-person ballots fell 12% while Democratic ones rose 78%. It isn't only blue counties: 🔴 R-registration counties (65): R+13.8 in 2022 → D+8.3 now 🔵 D-registration counties (35): D+26.8 → D+44.0 Republican raw count below 2022 in 62 of 98 counties. Margin moved toward Democrats in 89. Who's voting: ⚫ Black share of in-person ballots: 26.1%, against 19.4% in 2022 and 21.3% in 2024. That's 56,057 Black early voters so far, up from 34,128. ⚪ White early voters: D+7.7, against R+5.8 in 2022. That's a 13.5-point swing among white voters. Republican white ballots are down 17%, and Democratic white ballots are up 27%. 👴 65+: 58.5%, against 59.6% in 2022. This isn't an older electorate than 2022. It's the same mix of ages with different people showing up. Mail is a sideshow now. It's 36k ballots against 202k in person. On its own it's D+26.4, against D+32.1 in 2022, still a modest shift toward Republicans like last month. Can Republicans explain this away? • "Day 1 is always the most Democratic day." True, but statewide the drift is small. In 2022, in-person went from D+6.0 on Day 1 to D+5.5 at the end of early voting. In 2024 it went from D+1.5 to R+1.5. Even a drift twice as large as either year leaves 2026 about 15 points worse for Republicans. • "Republicans are saving it for Election Day." That's the only real way out, and Day 1 data can't rule it out. But asking a midterm electorate to stay home until Election Day in a race this close is a bad bet. • "Registration labels are stale." In the rural east, registration is moving away from Democrats, as old conservative white Democrats re-register R or unaffiliated. That makes a Democratic gain in labels harder to get, not easier. The few counties that shifted toward Republicans (Hyde, Gates, Anson, Duplin) are tiny, and the shift there is re-registration, not turnout. • "Helene." That could explain some of the drop in western NC. It doesn't explain Wake or the R-registration counties in the east. Caveats: • It's one day. In 2022, NC cast about 2.2M early votes and 3.8M total. • Party registration isn't a vote. Unaffiliated voters broke R in 2024. The independent split above assumes they break the way their county's D and R voters do, and so far that means Democratic. • 2024 was a presidential year with far higher turnout, so the useful comparison to 2024 is the margin, not the counts. Last time, I said the mail numbers neither ruled out a Democratic wave nor showed one. Day 1 in person looks like a Democratic wave. If Monday still comes in above D+20, this is no longer a Day 1 story. What does this mean for other states? States like OH and GA have no true party label, so we've been estimating via demographics there. This NC D+22.2 advantage comes despite similar demographics as 2022. So OH and GA are not necessarily signals that this is isolated to NC. What we've been seeing is that Republicans are doing well in mail voting. Republicans did well in mail voting in NC, NV, PA, and FL, but that advantage got wiped out in the first day of IPEV. Clark County and Florida start their in-person early voting soon. We will see if these two states follow NC's steps. Website link below: 👇