This week is the last for early voting ahead of the primary on Tuesday. North Carolina holds semi-closed primaries. This means registered Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians must vote with their affiliated party, but unaffiliated voters may choose any ballot. Experts say those unaffiliated voters have become the largest group of voters in our state.
Since 2010, the unaffiliated voter population in North Carolina has grown by more than one million according to Carolina Demography. Orange County has one of the largest percentages of unaffiliated voters with nearly 43,000 of its 108,000 voters registered as unaffiliated.
Michael Bitzer is a professor at Catawba College and a North Carolina elections expert. He said the trend in registering unaffiliated has been driven by voters under the age of 40 with 47 percent of Gen-Z voters registered unaffiliated.
“I think that this is going to be the continuation of generational replacement,” Bitzer said. “That kind of tectonic dynamics that’s going to make North Carolina politics continue into the future, a very interesting state.”
And Bitzer said this rise of unaffiliated voters is not just unique to North Carolina.
“This is definitely a national trend that’s happening here in North Carolina,” Bitzer said. “This is a trend that is being driven by younger voters. It’s happening across the country. Statewide, we’ve been watching the democratic percentage slip, we’ve been watching the unaffiliated percentage rise considerably, and registered Republicans have generally tended to hold about even in terms of the past.”
Bitzer said younger voters tend to stray from labels in partisanship, but their voting patterns are similar to other Americans. They still tend to lean toward one party and vote as much for that party as those who do identify partisan.
Even though there are more unaffiliated voters in North Carolina than Republican or Democrats, Bitzer said that doesn’t mean their voter turnout is better.
“They tend to have the lowest voter turnout of the three partisan affiliations,” Bitzer said. “In 2020, registered Republicans had over 80% turnout, registered Democrats were at the state average, 75%, [and] unaffiliated were significantly below into the mid 60s.”
Bitzer said more research needs to be done about whether unaffiliated voters in North Carolina are favoring one party more than the other.
“Some indications tend to be that they do favor Republican candidates and those policies over Democrats, but that that is a very small advantage,” Bitzer said. “I think that’s what keeps North Carolina so competitive. We are a purple state, but there is a very slight red tint to it.”
Early voting for the primaries ends Saturday afternoon. This is also the last opportunity to same-day register or change party affiliation ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, May 17.
Featured Photo via U.S. Department of State
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Even Republicans don’t want to be affiliated with the North Carolina Republican party and with voting records being public information, it is doubly true.
It;s like wearing a “I’m a racist and a misogynist that hates trans people” t-shirt.
North Carolina has always had a lot of independent voters, the first state to take that direction. The problem is not the number of independents. It is the unconstitutional state election laws passed by party politicians at state level designed to keep independent voters from becoming candidates for office. When the country first started, all voters were independent voters and all candidates for office were independent candidates, created by the writing and adoption of the Constitution. In 1796 in his Farewell Address, George Washington advised Americans not to start or support political parties, which he said were “self-created societies” that could destroy the freedom of the people and would prove incapable of providing good government. Four years later the Republican-Democrat Party dominated the election of 1800. In 1828 Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren reorganized the Republican-Democrat Party into the modern Democratic Party, which caused the Civil War by reducing independent voters to an insignificant percentage of voters. About 1965 independent voters began to increase again nationwide, reaching their present level at almost half of all registered voters. But they cannot run for office in most states. The nomination signature requirements are too high in most states for independent candidates. In this state an independent voter running for statewide office has to get 39,000 signatures to appear on the ballot, while a Democrat or Republican has to get 5,000. If you want to check, you will find that North Carolina has a similar signature requirement. The last federal court decision with regard to this upheld a similar signature requirement in Alabama. The only remedy would be for independent voters to unite behind a candidate and get the signatures to put that person on the ballot. It would require nomination petition signatures. It is unlikely it will ever happen because people in this world want an organization that automatically takes care of political decisions, such as the Nazi Party, the Communist Party, the Fascist Party, or the Democrats and Republicans in this country. When Republicans and Democrats say that independent voters are really Party members, they are telling the truth. That is what independent voters of today want to be.