Voter turnout was up across NC last year. 5 things that will matter in next elections.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, voter turnout in North Carolina increased in the 2020 elections compared to the 2016 election. More than 75% of registered voters cast a ballot, setting a new record.
More Republicans voted. More Democrats voted. More independents voted. More young people, middle-age people and older people voted. More white people voted, and so did more Black, Hispanic and Asian-American people.
You get the idea. More — everybody — voted.
In the end, North Carolina remained a Republican-leaning swing state, with the GOP winning most statewide races. But the state also tilted more Democratic in the races for president, Senate and governor than it did four years earlier.
Republican President Donald Trump beat Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in North Carolina by about 1.3% of the vote, down from his 3.7% margin of victory over Hillary Clinton here in 2016. Likewise, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper increased his margin of victory from 0.2% over Republican Pat McCrory in 2016 to 4.5% over Dan Forest in 2020.
In addition to North Carolina splitting its support between Trump and Cooper for the second election in a row, a small-yet-significant number of voters also kept up their support of third-party candidates. Because of them, only once in the last four presidential elections has a candidate managed to win a majority in North Carolina — when Republican Mitt Romney won 50.4% in 2012.
So North Carolina is clearly still a swing state. And the numbers show that voters were more engaged and energized than ever before in 2020.
So what might that mean for the future? Here are five takeaways from a News & Observer analysis of voter information that could illuminate how future elections will play out in the Old North State.
Black voter turnout didn’t swing NC
In such an evenly split state, the turnout of Black voters in North Carolina has the potential to swing an election. Black people make up about a quarter of the population here and have historically voted more Democrat than Republican.
And in Georgia, where two Democratic senators just won historic runoff races to give control of the Senate to Democrats, the Washington Post credited the shift to “sky-high turnout among Black voters.”
In North Carolina and other swing states, the Biden campaign held events at HBCUs and filmed ads in Black-owned barbershops. Three ads were filmed in a Durham barbershop, part of a $280 million television and digital ad campaign. State Sen. Natalie Murdock, a Durham Democrat who worked on outreach for the Biden campaign, also told The N&O just before the election that having Kamala Harris, a woman of color, on the ballot made a difference in voter enthusiasm.
“So many women are finally seeing someone like themselves on the ballot,” she said.
Black voter turnout in North Carolina increased 4.1 points over 2016. But it wasn’t enough for Democrats to flip the state for Biden over Trump. In the end, 68.4% of North Carolina’s Black voters cast a ballot in the 2020 elections, compared to 78.8% of white voters.
During a campaign visit to Shaw University and then a Raleigh barber shop, Harris told the crowd that Biden would work on police reforms that Black Lives Matter activists have asked for, like banning choke holds and creating standards for police using force against people.
Other racial and ethnic groups saw even greater turnout in 2020, although they also make up smaller pieces of the population.
Asian-American voters increased their turnout from 63.5% to 72%. And the total number of ballots they cast grew by nearly half, from 51,000 voters in 2016 to 75,000 in 2020.
After the election, The N&O was invited to a Zoom meetup organized by Asian activists from several swing states. Many said the coronavirus pandemic, and people’s frustrations with the government’s response, was a main cause of that large spike in voting.
“We talked to so many people on the ground who voted for the first time,” Chavi Koneru, executive director of N.C. Asian Americans Together, told the others at that meeting.
Among voters who self-identified as “other” or didn’t indicate their race, turnout rose double digits, from 59.7% to 72.4%. And Hispanic voters saw a smaller increase and smaller total turnout, increasing from 57.7% to 59.1% in 2020.
Growing urban vs. rural divide
Voter turnout might have been up in all 100 counties, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
The past four years have led many people to leave the political party they used to call home — either switching over to the other side or becoming unaffiliated with any party. Looking at where those shifts happened shows that the political divides along urban and rural lines have only become more extreme.
In Pender County between Wilmington and Jacksonville, for instance, the Democratic Party has lost so many members since 2016 that even though the turnout rate for Democrats there increased from 68% to 75% in 2020, the actual number of votes cast by Democrats in that county only grew by one single ballot.
That same pattern repeats in many other rural parts of the state. In Lenoir County, home to Kinston, registered Democrats cast 1,172 fewer ballots in 2020 even as Republicans cast 1,298 more. In Rocky Mount’s Nash County, where Cooper grew up, Democrats cast 266 fewer ballots while Republicans increased their numbers by 2,078.
In 70 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, the number of ballots cast by Democrats dropped from 2016 to 2020.
But the party’s large gains in urban areas more than made up for those losses in rural areas. Likewise, the GOP’s rural gains were offset somewhat by losses in metro areas.
In Durham County, the Republican Party lost 408 voters from 2016 while Democrats gained 11,121. In Wake County, Republicans increased their vote total by 6,267 but Democrats outpaced them with an additional 33,796. And compared to Wake, Mecklenburg County went both worse for Republicans and better for Democrats. Charlotte and its suburbs added 5,721 new GOP ballots and 35,614 new Democratic ballots.
In total statewide, Democrats added 98,996 voters from 2016 to 2020 and Republicans added 251,107. But the ranks of unaffiliated voters grew by more than both parties combined, as they cast 409,416 more votes than they did in 2016.
The growing number of unaffiliated voters reflects voters who are moderate and don’t agree with either party 100%, veteran Republican strategist Paul Shumaker told the N&O in an interview before the election. Typically, he said, they lean to the right on economic issues but to the left on social issues.
And as people keep eschewing the traditional parties to register as unaffiliated instead, it will only cement North Carolina’s status as a political battleground.
“We’re the swingiest of all swing states, and we will be for some time to come,” Shumaker said.
Young people voted more, still below average
While 75.2% of all voters cast a ballot this year, the numbers are not even across generations.
Only 63.1% of registered voters under 40 cast a ballot, which is more or less the age range for Millennials and Gen Z. Meanwhile, voter turnout was 82.7% for those over 40 — which would include Generation X, Baby Boomers and the Silent and Greatest generations.
Both numbers reflect an increase from 2016.
The data also shows that 81.6% of Republicans voted in 2020 compared to 75.1% of Democrats and 69.8% of unaffiliated voters.
According to the Pew Research Center, most registered voters in the U.S. are 50 or older, and one in every four is a senior citizen. However, Millennials are now the largest generation in the country. The number of non-voting younger people shows potential for politicians to win over new supporters in the future. In the meantime, though, those voters staying away from polling places tends to help Republicans.
Post-election polling on the 2016 results shows that the majority of voters over 50 supported Trump, but he only won 40% of voters in their 30s and 40s — and barely more than one in every four voters between 18 and 29 years old.
These 5 NC counties are highest for voter turnout
Looking at North Carolina across the state, voter turnout between 2016 and 2020 was significantly higher in some counties than others. Of the 100 counties, here’s where the get-out-the-vote movement succeeded most in energizing voters:
- Dare County, on the Outer Banks, saw its voter turnout rate increase 13.7 percentage points followed by western Caldwell County, which saw an increase of 12.5 points over 2016; then Graham County with 11.4.
- Hyde County with 11.3, and 10.7 in Carteret County, round out the top five counties where turnout increased by the most.
- Carteret’s boom also helped catapult it into the top five counties in terms of overall voter turnout. Those were Chatham (84.1%) Carteret (82.3%), Mitchell (86.1%), and a tie between Alexander and Ashe at 84.1% to round out the top five.
Lowest 5 NC counties for voter turnout
All counties had more voters in 2020 than in 2016. But some had only marginal increases in turnout.
The five counties where get-out-the-vote efforts were least successful were Lee County with a 4.1 percentage point increase, followed by Warren County with 4.2, Forsyth County with 4.3 and Montgomery County with 4.8.
And in terms of the overall turnout, the bottom counties were all in the southern and eastern parts of the state: Onslow (61.5%), Robeson (61.8%), Cumberland (64.9%), Hoke (65%) and a tie between Anson and Scotland counties at 67.4%.
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This story was originally published January 16, 2021, 9:00 AM.