More than 4.5 million North Carolinians have already voted with more than a million expected to vote in person today.
That’s more than 57% of the electorate of 7.8 million voters, according to the State Board of Elections count as of Monday morning. The state does not tabulate votes until the polls close at 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
The state is on track to set records for voter turnout, which it already has for early voting. At this point in the 2020 election, just under 4.6 million ballots had been cast, though a record number of absentee ballots were mailed in that year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Turnout is fairly evenly divided among parties, though Republicans have shown up in slightly higher numbers during the early voting period that ran from Oct. 17 to Nov. 2.
As of Monday, 4.48 million North Carolinians had voted. Of those, 1.45 million were registered Democrats and 1.48 million Republicans. Another 1.5 million unaffiliated voters also cast ballots. Only 18,647 Libertarians and and an assorted 11,000 voters registered with a third party had voted.
The vast majority of votes cast — 3 million — were from white voters, according to the State Board of Elections daily turnout reports. Black voters had cast 789,444 votes as of Election Day. Voters who identify as Hispanic or Latino numbered 127,600 as of Tuesday.
Women are showing up to the polls in North Carolina in larger numbers than men, with 2.3 million ballots cast by Election Day. Men clocked in at just above 1.8 million votes with another 320,000 undesignated.
State Board of Elections staff on Wednesday, Nov. 6 will randomly select precincts, early voting sites, and absentee-by-mail ballots to be counted by hand in every county as part of a required post-election audit for the 2024 General Election.
In the coming days, all 100 county boards of elections will count the presidential contest by hand on ballots from the chosen Election Day precincts, in-person early voting sites, or absentee-by-mail ballots. Then, they will compare the totals with the results of the voting machine counts.
Required by state law, the sample audit count helps ensure the reliability of election results tabulated by machine.
The random selection of two voting groups to be counted by hand in each county will take place at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
