Three days into the early voting period, turnout remains brisk across Orange County – and across the state of North Carolina.

That’s no surprise: turnout is typically lower for midterm elections, but this year all eyes are on North Carolina as the race for control of the U.S. Senate could come down to the contest between incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan and Republican challenger Thom Tillis, the Speaker of the State House of Representatives.

Surveys show the two in a neck-and-neck race, and different pollsters have different candidates in the lead. Last week, Public Policy Polling released its latest survey, showing Hagan holding on to a slim three-point lead, with Libertarian Sean Haugh polling about 5 percent and a sizable number of voters still undecided.

See the full results from PPP.

And we’re not alone. All over the country, more and more surveys are showing more and more races coming down to the wire – which means it’s still entirely unclear who’s going to be celebrating come Election Day.

WCHL’s Aaron Keck spoke with Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen last week.

 

As for voter turnout: in the first three days of the nine-day early voting period, 6690 voters cast their ballots in Orange County alone. That means Orange County is on track to see about 20,000 early voters this year. To put that into perspective, about 16,500 residents cast early ballots in the last midterm, in 2010.

The Orange County Board of Elections has broken the numbers down by day and by early-voting site.

Early voting resumes today and continues through Saturday. There are five early voting sites in Orange County: the Board of Elections office in downtown Hillsborough; Master’s Garden Preschool, also in Hillsborough; the Seymour Center in Chapel Hill, just off Homestead Road; NC Hillel on Cameron Avenue in downtown Chapel Hill, just off campus; and Carrboro Town Hall on Main Street.

View a full list of polling sites and hours of operation.

The Seymour Center has seen the biggest turnout so far, with more than 2000 early voters already.

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