Early voting turnout was high for this year’s midterm election, both across North Carolina and locally in Orange County.

What that portends for the election’s outcome, though, is still anyone’s guess.

Statewide, 29 percent of registered North Carolina voters have already cast ballots, either by mail or at early voting sites. That’s more than 2.1 million votes in all, up about 5 percent from the early-vote period in 2018, the last midterm election.

Click here for more statewide early-voting stats, via the NC Board of Elections.

Of those 2.1 million votes, 38 percent were cast by Democrats, 31 percent by Republicans, and 30 percent by unaffiliated voters. That difference is not a surprise: Democratic voters have historically been more likely to take advantage of the early-voting period, while Republicans tend to predominate on Election Day itself. (There was no difference in 2020, though: the early-voting turnout rate was exactly 65.7 percent for both Democrats and Republicans, though GOP voters still had a significant edge on Election Day.)

In Orange County, a total of 44,822 votes have already been cast – a 40.3 percent turnout rate, third highest among North Carolina’s 100 counties. Chatham County has the highest turnout rate by far, at 47.3 percent; Alleghany County is second at 41.5 percent.

Click here for county-by-county early-voting turnout data.

But while North Carolina as a whole saw more early votes cast in 2022 than 2018, Orange County’s raw vote total actually dropped slightly: 45,545 Orange County residents cast early ballots four years ago.

If you haven’t cast your vote yet, you have one more day to do it: Tuesday, November 8, is Election Day itself, with polls open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Click here to find your polling place, download a sample ballot, and access other important information about voting in this year’s midterm election.

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