EDITORIAL: Don’t read too much into those early voting numbers

At some point on Saturday, the NC Board of Elections reported, the state of North Carolina surpassed 1 million votes for this election. Many of them were absentee voters — military, citizens living overseas and local civilians — but early voting itself, spread across hundreds of locations in our 100 counties — has, as of Sunday, brought in more than 900,000 votes. All told, about 13 percent of the state’s 7.8 million voters have already cast ballots.

And while this is great news for anyone who believes in the true nature of our representative democracy, like all elections of late it’s tough to get a read on what it all means.

These million votes are roughly evenly split, with Democrats, at almost 365,000, coming out on top; Republicans, at about 342,000, landing next; and unaffiliated voters, the state’s largest cohort — by a lot — casting almost 320,000. 

But what does this tell us about the race at the top of the ballot: Harris vs. Trump?

Unfortunately, not much.

Assuming that everyone voted for their registered party — not really a safe assumption these days — that would give Kamala Harris a slight edge among voters registered to a party. And Democrats still outnumber Republicans in this state by just over 100,000 — 2.4 million or so against 2.3 million or so — even after the great migration to unaffiliated that’s taken place over the last several years. But unaffiliated voters number almost 3 million in NC right now. And the trouble there is we don’t know what drove them from party politics in the first place. Did they leave the GOP because of Trump, or because the party didn’t do enough to support Trump? Did former Democrats leave their party because it was too liberal, or not progressive enough?

The answer, of course, is both. And that means that the largest political party in the state — which is “no political party” — has yet to make its voice heard.

So when it comes to these early voting numbers, we can celebrate the win for democracy. But there are no tea leaves to read just yet, if ever there will be.