Unaffiliated voters overtake Democrats, now largest voting bloc in North Carolina
Tags: NCCapitol, North Carolina politics, 2022 elections, voting, voter registration
Posted March 12, 2022 2:02 p.m. EST
Updated March 12, 2022 2:04 p.m. EST
By Bryan Anderson, WRAL state government reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina State Board of Elections on Saturday said ... snip...
Of the more than 7.2 million registered voters today, nearly 2.5 million are unaffiliated. That’s 34.5% of all voters. There are almost 2.5 million Democrats and 2.2 million Republicans, according to state elections data.
Well, it looks like it finally happened in #ncpol:
Today's @ncsbe data of active, inactive, & temporary registered NC voters shows unaffiliated is now the largest group, surpassing Democratic & Republican within 7.2M+ voter pool
Raw data found here: https://dl.ncsbe.gov/?prefix=data/Link to tweet
The state elections board released a report early Saturday showing 99 fewer registered unaffiliated voters than Democrats. In the afternoon, Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the board, said unaffiliated voters overtook Democratic voters when including those who are considered "temporary," which the state's weekly voter registration report doesn't cover.
"If an unregistered person submits a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) or Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB), that person is registered with a voter status of 'Temporary,'" Gannon said. "This applies to military and overseas who submit a FPCA or FWAB."
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Data from the state elections board shows nearly 900,000 of the state’s more than 5 million voters in January 2004 were unaffiliated, or 17.7% of registered voters. Nearly 47.6% of voters were Democrats and 34.5% were Republicans.
Link to article...
https://www.wral.com/unaffiliated-voters-overtake-democrats-now-largest-voting-bloc-in-north-carolina/20184005/
= new reply since forum marked as read
To keep qpukes from purging them. Dunno. Just a thought that occurred to me. 
Thx, Pants! 
UNAFFILIATED VOTERS MAKE UP A PLURALITY. SO WHAT?
BY THOMAS MILLS | MAR 14, 2022 | EDITOR'S BLOG | 1 COMMENT
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Voters have been migrating away from parties since at least the 1990s and they’ve been leaving the Democratic Party since the end of the one-party South almost 60 years ago. In rural counties, legacy Democrats are still on the books. They’ve been registered Democratic all of their lives but have been voting Republican since Reagan, especially at the federal level. As they die, the party’s share of voter registration will shrink, replaced mostly by people who register unaffiliated.
Republicans, for their part, increased their share of registration beginning with the Democrats’ embrace of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and continued until about a decade ago. Since then, they’ve made up about 30% of the electorate, give or take a percentage or two. Expect Democrats to shrink until they reach roughly that percentage, too.
Most people who register today have little party loyalty even if they vote largely along party lines. A small share of those voters are too conservative or too nationalistic for the GOP. Another small share is too far left to embrace the Democratic Party. And the largest share are people who are largely fed up with the political rhetoric of the day to embrace Democrats or Republicans even if they may be lean heavily liberal or conservative.
Younger, more educated urban/suburban voters who register unaffiliated tend to support Democrats and will continue to so. Rural, exurban unaffiliated voters with less education will continue to support Republicans. Most of the people who will register with a party moving forward will be the most ardent partisans among us. People like me.
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More...
https://www.politicsnc.com/unaffiliated-voters-make-up-a-plurality-so-what/
About the author...
https://www.politicsnc.com/about/about-thomas-mills/
