North Carolina mail ballots trail 2022 pace equally for both parties

Twenty days before the midterms, registered Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina are returning mail ballots at about 70 percent of the rate they had reached at the same point in 2022. Unaffiliated and minor-party voters are at 69 percent. Relative to their own registered voters, no party is further behind than the others. Pennsylvania's latest file shows a similar gap, but that reading does not survive a closer look at the calendar. Maine is running ahead of 2022.

Trackers report the party split of ballots. We divided each party's returned ballots by its registered voters, using the three states' official registration counts, and compared the result with the same day out in 2022 and 2024.

What the same-day comparison shows

At 21 days out, 0.60 percent of North Carolina's registered Democrats had returned a ballot, against 0.87 percent at the same point in 2022. For Republicans the figures are 0.23 percent and 0.33 percent. Both are about 70 percent of the 2022 pace. Total returns, 31,581 against 43,638 four years ago, are 68 percent of the 2022 rate once the larger register is allowed for.

The calendar is the same: North Carolina mailed its first ballots 60 days before Election Day in both years, on 4 September this year. The gap is steady: on every day from 32 days out, each party's rate has been between 68 and 86 percent of 2022's. The caution is size. At this stage in 2022 only 2 percent of the state's eventual early vote was in. The drop is also in requests, not returns: 136,313 ballots sent, against 190,696, while Democrats have sent back 25 percent of the ballots they asked for, against 24 percent in 2022. Fewer voters of every party are choosing to vote by mail, which says little about overall turnout.

In Pennsylvania the same measure puts Democrats at 77 percent of their 2022 pace and Republicans at 78 percent, with 277,188 ballots returned. That comparison is fragile. The state's 13 October file showed no new returns from the day before, the Columbus Day holiday, when there is no mail delivery, while the 2022 file for the same day out added 51,000. Counties also mailed earlier this year: by 40 days out they had sent 246,000 ballots, against 128,000 in 2022. Measured the same way at 23 days out, returns were 12 percent ahead of the 2022 pace, and at 28 days out 65 percent ahead. Ballots sent are at 94 percent of the 2022 level once the register is allowed for. Pennsylvania is not clearly behind 2022, or ahead of it.

Maine is different. Democrats there have returned ballots at 10.7 percent of active registered voters, against 8.2 percent in 2022, while Republicans are at 4.0 percent against 3.8 percent. Maine's latest enrollment count is from March, after inactive voters were moved off the active list, so this year's denominator is too small. If enrollment grows as it did between March and November 2024, Maine Democrats are about 25 percent ahead of their 2022 pace and Republicans about level with theirs. Maine's ballots also went out a little earlier this year, so the lead may narrow.

Why the 2024 baseline misleads

Against 2024, the usual comparison this month, Democrats look far stronger. In North Carolina, registered Democrats led returned ballots by 27.4 points at 21 days out, against 10.1 points at the same point in 2024. In Pennsylvania the lead is 51.6 points against 40.5, and in Maine 36.3 against 23.3.

Little of that change comes from Democrats. Republicans are voting the way they did before 2024. North Carolina's Republican rate is 0.23 percent, against 0.79 percent at this point in 2024. In Pennsylvania the Republican rate is 36 percent of its 2024 level on the latest file, the Democratic rate 49 percent. Pew Research Center found that 39 percent of Republican voters cast their ballot in person on Election Day in 2024, against 28 percent of Democrats.

Apply this year's party registration figures to the 2024 return rates and North Carolina's Democratic lead would be 8.3 points, close to the 10.1 seen in 2024. The 17-point jump is about voting method, not about which side is keener.

Against 2022, the right baseline for a midterm, the Democratic lead is smaller this year in North Carolina, 27.4 points against 32.8, and in Pennsylvania, 51.6 against 55.3. Nearly all of that is registration.

Registration has moved

The registered party gap has narrowed in all three states. In North Carolina, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 3.7 points of the register in October 2022. On 10 October this year the state board counted 2,331,133 Democrats and 2,330,643 Republicans, a gap of 490 voters, while voters with no party or a minor party rose to 41 percent of the roll. In Pennsylvania the Democratic edge fell from 6.2 points to 2.6, and in Maine from 7.0 points to 3.5. A smaller Democratic share of early ballots can mean nothing more than fewer registered Democrats.

Democrats may also be changing how they vote. Michael Morse and Marc Meredith, in an analysis of North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Pennsylvania for NBC News on 9 October, cited by the Election Law Blog, reported that Democrats were requesting fewer mail ballots than in past elections but returning the ones they request more quickly. They warned that this makes enthusiasm harder to read from early figures. Our North Carolina data fit: Democratic requests at this stage are down from 89,658 to 55,340, and Democrats have returned a slightly larger share of them than in 2022. Pennsylvania's are mixed: between 23 and 28 days out Democrats had returned a larger share of their requests than in 2022, but on the latest file, which missed a day of returns, the share is 27 percent against 33.

A poor record as a forecast

Across 12 state races in 2022 and 2024 in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Maryland and Maine, reading the final registered-party lead among early and mail ballots as the result missed by 14.7 points on average, and by 42.9 points in Pennsylvania in 2022. Correcting each 2024 figure by the same state's 2022 error still missed by 7.5 points on average, and in five of the six states it was too Democratic. Our final three-week poll average in the same six races missed by 2.7 points, though in Colorado and Maine that average rests on three polls and two polls.

The wider record is similar. In Florida in 2020, registered Democrats had cast more than 400,000 more mail ballots than Republicans by 14 October, Axios reported, and Trump won the state by 3.4 points. In Florida in 2022, registered Republicans led the early and mail vote by 5.9 points and Marco Rubio won by 16.4. In Maryland in 2022, registered Democrats led mail ballots by 54 points and Chris Van Hollen won by 32. In Nevada, Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent, who tracks the county-by-county early vote, called Catherine Cortez Masto's narrow win in 2022. In 2024, with Republicans ahead in early ballots, his reading pointed to Kamala Harris by 0.3 points, and Trump won by about 3.

What early votes are good for

Early figures do two things well. Compared with the same day in the last similar election, on the same mailing calendar, and divided by each party's registered voters, they show whether early turnout is running ahead or behind. On count night they show how many ballots remain and from which kinds of voters. The numbers also move: in 2024, Pennsylvania's Democratic lead among returned ballots fell from 40.5 points at this stage to 22.3 in the final tally.

Our forecast does not use early votes. On the evidence so far, this year's returns say that fewer North Carolina voters of every party are voting by mail than in 2022, that Pennsylvania's comparison is too unsteady to read, and that Maine Democrats are moving faster than they did four years ago. They say nothing yet about who will win.