Tar Heel early vote going Carolina blue?
Posted: Monday, October 20, 2008 2:06 PM by Carrie Dann
From NBC's Carrie Dann
Here's your early-vote snapshot of the day, courtesy of the meticulously up-to-date records of the North Carolina elections board.
As of this morning, over 340,000 North Carolinians have cast general election ballots, with the vast majority taking advantage of the state's early in-person absentee voting, dubbed "One Stop" by Tar Heels.
Over six million state residents are registered to vote in North Carolina, one of the nation's newest political battlegrounds.
Of 270,000 in-person voters since "One Stop" opened last Thursday, over 60% were registered Democrats, compared to only 20% Republicans. (The remainder: mostly unaffiliated voters, who make up about 20% of the state's electorate.)
Of the 66,000 civilians who have mailed in absentee ballots, Republicans have outnumbered Democrats by a margin of about 2-1.
Still, registered Democrats make up 55% of those who have already cast votes for the North Carolina general election, while registered Republicans account for less than one in three ballots already cast.
*** UPDATE *** As of 4:30pm today, the number of in-person early voters jumped to 358,000, per an update from state elections director Gary Bartlett. That means that close to ninety thousand North Carolinians cast ballots today.
