With just a week before Election Day, North Carolina’s Republicans are turning out more heavily than Democrats and independents in early voting, shedding the party’s former disdain for anything other than balloting on the first Tuesday of November.

The number of registered Republicans casting early ballots across the state surpassed Democrats late last week and have been holding a slim lead through Tuesday’s overnight count.  

Trailing both parties are voters who are independent, the so-called unaffiliated voters, who constitute the largest bloc of registrants and are capable of tilting most races.  

The numbers through Oct. 27: Republicans 961,871; Democrats 938,167; and the unaffiliated 904,669. That’s less than a half percent separating the two major party’s voters.

But here are some key qualifiers to keep in mind when looking at these numbers:  

• First and foremost, this is the count of party and unaffiliated voters who have cast ballots. None of these ballots will be counted until the polls close at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5.  While party loyalty is a strong indicator of how we vote, there will be party defectors and the party disgruntled who leave the ballot blank. (Spoiler alert: In this election the voter’s gender may matter more than party; see below).

• Second, these numbers are snapshots taken in the middle of a race and don’t show which competitor may have some energy in reserve (more on this below) for a final sprint, including on Nov. 5. 

• Third, unaffiliated voters are true wild cards whose leanings defy accurate predictions. Although they vote in lower percentages than party loyalists, their sheer numbers can decide the winner.

Two additional measures in the early-voting reports are noteworthy. One, which I alluded to above, is a measure called “proportion.”  So far, about 35 percent of the early ballots have been cast by Republicans and 33 percent by Democrats. 

But here’s that qualifier: To get that lead, it’s taken 38 percent of all registered Republicans to cast votes. Just 35 percent of all Democrats have voted, meaning the party has more in reserve to catch up. Think of it like a NASCAR race in which the leading car is slightly ahead of a rival. But the rival has more fuel in the tank, which could be important toward the finish.   

The other noteworthy measure has nothing to do with party registration. It’s gender. It comes to this: Women can determine this election. In North Carolina, one of the handful of swing states in the presidential election, women have the clout to decide every race from the White House and governor’s mansion to school boards, county commissions and the judiciary.  

In the 12 days of early voting since Oct. 17, women have outvoted men by about 10 percentage points. On a typical day, about 52 percent of the ballots are cast by women and just 42 percent cast by men. ( Six percent of voters decline to report their gender). 

Through Monday, women have cast about 300,000 more ballots than men – more of a gender chasm than a gender gap.  Keep in mind that this is a state where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in 2020 by just 74,483 votes. By Nov. 5, that winning margin four years ago will be a small fraction of the gender gap. 

The size of that gap is widened even more by the fact that women turn out to vote  disproportionately higher than their percentage of the electorate. In this early voting period, although women comprise 49 percent of all registered voters, they have cast 52 percent of the early ballots. 

What does this mean? The words written in 1865 by poet William Ross Wallace may apply here: “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”   

Bluest of the blue Buncombe County

Not surprisingly, Democrats are outvoting Republicans by more than 2-to-1 in the latest tallies. Unaffiliated voters – the largest bloc – trail the Democrats by a smidgen. Unless something akin to a political Helene happens, it looks like Buncombe’s impact on Nov. 5 will be to make a lopsided contribution to the Democratic Party’s statewide vote total, which may offset Republican victories in more numerous, deep red counties. 

Also notable in Buncombe early-voting turnout is the gender gap, which mirrors the statewide average. Going into the final five days of early voting, women had cast 42,084 ballots while men added just 33, 651. That’s a commanding 52-41 percent gap.  (Memo to men: Find cradles to rock). 

Campaign fallout from Helene

The disruption – and some would say damage – from Helene extended also into many political campaigns, just as most candidates were hoping to hit their peaks. Communicating with potential voters who were struggling to mend shattered lives became impossible, if not intrusive.  Campaigning as we know it – door knocking, rallying, phone calling – was out of the question. 

No campaign has been hit harder than Democrat Caleb Rudow’s longshot effort to unseat incumbent Republican Chuck Edwards in the 11th Congressional District, which was ground zero for the storm’s wrath. Unseating an even marginally competent incumbent is always a challenge, which Rudow, the Asheville state legislator, acknowledged when he launched his campaign a year ago. 

Edwards began the race with an infusion of special-interest money, much of it coming from corporate and partisan PACs whose interests the Hendersonville Republican could impact through his House committee votes. Big checks rolled in from Walmart, gun rights organizations, the trucking and aviation industries, big pharma and even rural electrification. Big oil and gas funneled support through the American Battleground Fund, which is the House GOP’s deep pocket that provides camouflage for anti-green energy industries.

When Helene hammered the region, Edwards announced he was suspending his campaign to concentrate on assisting constituents because “it’s no time for politics.” Give credit where it is due: Edwards’s office became a lifeline for many victims, connecting them to many federal agencies – notably FEMA – and to local governments. He’s been on battered ground in the district’s farthest corners, while shuttling back and forth to the Capitol to advocate for FEMA’s continued need. 

Had he not failed to criticize ex-President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson for falsely accusing FEMA of diverting aid money from Helene victims to assist undocumented immigrants, Edwards would merit praise for actually keeping his pledge to put partisanship aside. Speaking truth to GOP power was apparently a bridge too far. He gave up the no-campaigning facade in the past week with a TV ad that, paradoxically, implies he’s not being political. 

Fact is, he had the money to burn. When he called a halt to the campaign he had $309,221 in the bank. Rudow was down to $142,998 with little more than money for yard signs and digital ads to show for his efforts. 

Politics isn’t an equal opportunity employer.

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