'Holy cow': Swing state's early voting surges in 'intriguing development'

More voters cast early ballots in North Carolina’s 2026 midterm primaries than in the 2024 presidential primary, a stark display of voter interest — and a result driven by a huge surge in Democratic voter participation even as Republican turnout fell slightly.

“The Republicans seem to be less motivated to come out than Democrats, and that holds no matter how you calculate it,” said Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University. “In general, what this is telling me is [that] people are not sitting this one out, particularly Democrats.”

More than 296,000 Democrats have cast early ballots, as have more than 215,000 unaffiliated voters and roughly 200,000 Republicans, according to North Carolina State Board of Elections data updated Monday morning. Unaffiliated voters, who are allowed to choose either a Democratic or Republican ballot in North Carolina, have broken toward Democrats, with around 55% casting a Democratic primary ballot.

The early results suggest a Democratic voter base motivated to vote by opposition to the second Trump administration, whose sweeping cuts to federal programs, hardline immigration crackdowns, and aggressive military actions have sparked backlash from the left and pushed some independents away from the GOP.

With more than 710,000 early ballots, North Carolina voters have outpaced both the 2022 midterm primary and the 2024 presidential primary, which saw roughly 585,000 and 700,000 early voters, respectively. But N.C. also has more voters now.

“There’s a way to look at these data and say, ‘Holy cow, turnout’s way up.’ And that’s correct — if you just count raw votes, it’s extraordinary how much turnout is up,” Cooper said. “But there’s more people who live in the state now than in 2022, and there’s more registered voters.”

North Carolina had 7.7 million registered voters as of Feb. 28, compared to 7.2 million registered voters at the end of early voting in 2022. That means early voting has jumped from about 8% of voters in 2022 to over 9% in 2026.

“It’s still real, still meaningful, still important, but the size is not quite what it looks like if you just count votes,” Cooper said.

Among Democrats, early turnout rose from about 9.5% of all registered Democrats in 2022 to 12.8% in 2026, while Republican turnout fell slightly from 8.7% to 8.6%. Early turnout among unaffiliated voters rose from 6.1% in 2022 to 7.1% this year.

Unaffiliated early voters in the 2022 midterm primary broke heavily toward Republicans, with over 60% selecting a GOP ballot that year, in contrast to their Democratic lean in the 2026 primaries.

That year, there was a competitive U.S. Senate Republican primary between then-Rep. Ted Budd and former Gov. Pat McCrory, while former N.C. Chief Justice Cheri Beasley’s closest competition withdrew ahead of the primary.

This year, both the Republican Party and Democratic Party had clear frontrunners throughout their U.S. Senate primaries in Michael Whatley and former Gov. Roy Cooper, respectively, though the GOP primary saw better-organized competition, including attorney Don Brown and 2024 state superintendent nominee Michele Morrow.

“Democrats appear to have generated disproportionate early energy, both among registered partisans and among Unaffiliated voters,” Catawba College professor Michael Bitzer wrote in a blog post Sunday. “The fact that more than half of Unaffiliated voters chose the Democratic ballot — reversing the traditional “go where the action is” pattern — is one of the cycle’s most intriguing developments.”

While Cooper said geographic turnout patterns give little indication of which way most races are heading, one notable exception is in the much-watched Republican state Senate primary between Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) and Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page.

Split between Rockingham County and its far more populous neighbor Guilford County, the state senate district’s Republican primary has seen a majority of its early vote come from the former — where polling has shown Berger trailing his opponent by double digits. Roughly 65% of the early vote has come from Rockingham County.

“It doesn’t mean that Berger’s doomed by any stretch, but even with all that said, I think right now, with the data the way they are, you’d rather be Sam Page,” Cooper said.

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