Primary voting surge in NC shows a blue wave heading toward November | Opinion

Democrats looking for a blue wave election may have seen the first crest in this week’s primary turnout.

Early voting this year ran 25 percent above the 2022 midterm primary and also exceeded the 2024 presidential primary. Most of the surge came from a boost in Democrats voting early and an increase in unaffiliated voters voting in Democratic primaries.

That pattern broke with past elections when unaffiliated voters gravitated toward the most competitive top-of-the ticket race, which this year was the Republican U.S. Senate primary.

In a post on the Old North State Politics blog, Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer wrote of the early voting surge: “Democrats appear to have generated disproportionate early energy, both among registered partisans and among unaffiliated voters. The fact that more than half of Unaffiliated voters chose the Democratic ballot — reversing the traditional ‘go where the action is’ pattern — is one of the cycle’s most intriguing developments.”

“The question now,” Bitzer wrote, “is not whether early voting was strong. It was. The question is what these patterns signal about overall turnout — and whether Election Day reinforces or rebalances what early voting has already revealed.”

On Election Day, former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic primary winner, received 370,531 votes, just short of the 377,725 he gained during early voting. The Republican winner, former national and state GOP Chair Michael Whatley, received 227,303 votes on Election Day, up from the 173,723 he received during early voting.

The party out of the White House usually turns out stronger in midterm elections. But this year the pattern was even more pronounced.

That suggests that Democrats and Democrat-leaning unaffiliated voters are alarmed by the Trump administration’s actions on health insurance premiums and immigration and weary of the Republican-controlled legislature’s underfunding of schools and other state programs. They appear highly motivated to vote in November.

Anderson Clayton, the state Democratic Party chair, said she is not ready to predict November’s turnout, but she was not surprised by the rise in people voting Democratic in the primary. “It was exactly what we expected,” she said. “People are fed up.”

The rising support for Democrats comes as Republican candidates are increasingly vulnerable in what is usually an evenly divided state.

President Donald Trump will not be on the November ballot, but his level of approval will shape who is motivated to vote. The president carried North Carolina three times, but recent polls show him underwater in the state with a 52% disapproval rating.

Whether Trump can still move voters wasn't clear in this primary. Whatley rode the president's support to an easy victory, but Trump’s endorsement did not get Senate leader Phil Berger to the front in the 26th Senate District. In that GOP primary, Berger trails Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page by two votes with the outcome likely to be determined by a recount.

North Carolina Democrats are heading toward November with a clear advantage in public opinion, according to a High Point University Poll released on Monday.

The survey of registered voters asked how they would vote for generic ballots for the House and Senate. In both cases, those responding intended to vote Democratic 46% to 41% percent for Republicans. It was the same margin when voters were asked how they would vote in state House and Senate elections.

Unless there is a dramatic change in the economy or a major national event, it appears that Democrats are ready to ride a wave of support driven mostly on disapproval of the Republicans’ performance in both Washington and Raleigh.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com