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I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. We have got our final Carolina Journal poll ahead of the November the third midterm election. We have already got early voting that began back last week, and we will continue to watch that through the remainder of next week and through next weekend, all culminating on Election Day, November the third. To walk through the details on this poll, it's my pleasure as always to welcome the editor in chief of CarolinaJournal dot com, David Larson, to our airwaves this morning on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Dave, let's start right off at the top. Of the country, thirty-seven point two percent of Americans or North Carolinians, excuse me, say that the country is heading in the right direction. Fifty-seven point five say wrong direction. That's a marginal improvement from when we chatted one month ago in our September poll. It is in, you know, it could be attributed to a number of things.
You know, it's about four percent better.
So I think, you know, one potential is that. You know, a large concern that people had was just general prices and inflation, and especially gas prices, probably affecting you know the whole span of of things, of costs of other you know items.
So I think a big part of that could be just people looking at how things are going in their life and seeing, hey, you know, now we have you know gas down in the threes again, and and that could be part of it. Also, just the election. Getting closer, so maybe some people are starting to maybe want to give their side more credit and that kind of thing as well.
Well, let me ask you about that because I think we're going to see a similar trend as we work through our poll. We asked a lot of these questions, similar questions, back in September. David, we're now in the thick of it. Early voting began last week. We've already seen more than a million people cast a ballot during the early voting period.
The record, the record turnouts for a for a midterm election. Folks, no question about it, are a lot more engaged now than they were a month ago when we were still a couple of weeks out from the election itself. Absolutely, I think that's we're going to see that throughout. But you see that in in a lot of undecided numbers now being cut in half, and you know maybe a lot of the undecided had been conservatives. You know, I think when your own parties and in in power for a long period of time, sometimes there's a little bit of drop off in terms of enthusiasm for your own side because you you can't blame the other side anymore when you've been in power for a while.
So.
Some of the enthusiasm drops off, but you have seen you know a bit of those conservatives that had said they're undecided. Maybe they weren't sold on Michael Wattley. He didn't have high name ID, that kind of thing.
So I do think you know with that, people paying more attention to the elections now and going out to early vote. A lot of people are coming back to their side. I think. Yeah, and we've seen some of those very lengthy lines throughout the early voting period over the last couple of days. Another question, number three in our poll: Do you approve or disapprove of the job President Donald Trump is doing as president?
Saw similar improvements there as well in in comparison to the direction of the country. David, for the most part, do those numbers tend to track pretty closely together? I think so. People look to the top often. They don't look to their local mayor, who they may not even know the name of.
If you look at polling, they they look to the very top if things are going poorly.
So the fact that a lot of people think, you know, we're on the right track a little bit better, you know, it's still thirty seven percent isn't really a good number, but it's at least better.
So to the degree that some people are seeing an improvement. Trump's numbers have improved slightly from about 41 to 44, and as I said, some of that might just be people coming back around as well. That okay, it's election season. I'm not going to vote for the Democrats. You know, if you're conservative, you're like, I have my problems maybe with Trump.
Some might be thinking, but I'm I'm going to you know signal a little bit more approval now.
Well, and it's it's funny you mentioned his approval at 44 percent, his disapproval at 54 and a half percent. That's actually the lowest number that we've seen since our Carolina Journal poll back in March.
So it's been pretty much the entire span of the middle part of the year where we saw that disapproval rating in the high 50s, even flirting with 60 percent back in our September poll, and at 57.
So that's a pretty sizable improvement, even though it is only just a couple of percentage points. Yeah, and the fact that it's forty nine point two percent strongly disapprove—that is a place where you do not have much margin to to mess with. There, if you're that close to you only need fifty percent plus one, and if kind of the top of your not the top of the ticket, he's not on a ticket, but you know the head of the party heading into a major election is is seeing nearly fifty percent of people strongly disapproving. It's not a good place to be, but as you said, it's a little bit better than it had been. And we'll see if that will have an impact in these in these final days before Election Day gets here on November the third.
Let's talk about the approval of our current governor, that is a Democrat governor, Josh Stein. I'll admit, David, there really hasn't been a whole lot going on in terms of politics at the top here in North Carolina since we asked this question last month. The biggest thing, and we'll get into this a little bit later on in our poll, is the suspension of the gas tax that did have very strong bipartisan support in the. General Assembly, there wasn't really a whole lot of fanfare with the governor signing it. His approval remains right at fifty percent.
We saw forty-nine point four percent in the month of September. His disapproval keeping in that same vein as well, thirty-two percent. Really hasn't been much going on in the governor's mansion.
Well, he did he did gain a point, so that's something.
Now he's over fifty percent, and I do think the gas tax probably is part of it. He had done something with with diesel fuel, you know. That there's certain died fuel payment that maybe if you're an agriculture you have to pay, and he suspended that. And then he did get some of the he claimed some of the credit. I would say for you know what he had a signing ceremony out at you know Ager.
He's a North Carolina 11th congressional district. Candidate and he has a farm out west near Asheville. And Stein actually did the signing for suspending the gas tax on that on that candidate's farm. And and during that, he said, you know, it's a little too late, and Republicans are only deciding to do something now that it's election season.
So not only did he kind of swipe some of the credit for it, but he said it came too late and it's only political.
So I think he's he's been trying to. Stay in the background a little bit, and then claim a lot of the credit for anything that you know. The Republican legislature is hoping, probably, to get a little bit of credit for that. I don't know which side probably will see that more in the polls.
Well, let's let's ask that question. Number five in our poll was if the 2026 general election were held today, would you vote for the Republican or Democrat candidate for the North Carolina state legislature? The Republican candidates at 42.7 percent, Democrats at 48.5. We saw about a point movement in favor of the the Republicans, a point removed from the Democrats. Similar numbers, but a little bit of a bump there.
Actually, not too dissimilar from what we just talked about with Stein. Approval versus disapproval, as well. Yeah, I do think Republicans are seeing a very small. They might have small bump from last poll that we did. I think maybe Republicans hit kind of the the bottom of the the pit there, and they're starting to rebound a tiny bit.
They might have hit a floor, but the numbers still aren't great. You know, it's forty three forty nine, basically, and. It'll be interesting to see because these are these are polls. They don't necessarily show the enthusiasm, but I think the early voting does show a bit of more enthusiasm. In addition to the forty nine percent Democratic preference to the forty three for Republicans.
In addition to that, I do think we're seeing a little bit of enthusiasm gap that's going to bring that number maybe up higher for Democrats. You know, to be seen, but the early numbers. Kind of a bearing out that there might be a preference for Democrats so far. Let's move down to our next question. Same thing.
Instead of talking about the North Carolina General Assembly, we're talking about North Carolina's 11th congressional seats that we have here across the state of North Carolina. With that, similar numbers: 43.2% said they would vote for the generic Republican candidate; 49.1% said they would support the Democrat candidate. Important to note: with both of these questions, David, there are only a few what we would call toss-up or swing districts. On the congressional side, it's really only North Carolina one and North Carolina eleven. Eleven's out in the western half of the state.
One is in the northeast. Maybe congressional district number three, which had some changes due to the one one shifting a little bit there, but tracking very similar to that generic legislative question as well. Yeah, I think that's that's right. Number one is they're about as far away as you can get from each other.
So NC one is northeast and NC eleven is southwest. But they're the two that are. I think they're going to be both very close. And if there is the the trend of early voting favoring the Democrats and a lot of the polling favoring the Democrats, Republicans are are in danger probably of losing both of those. Difficult to say.
NC three has been interesting. The Democrats are making more noise about that one, and a rating agency moved it, you know, to more of a lean Republican. But it's what Andy Jackson called the danger of a dummy mander, where you know you took some Republican voters away from NC three to NC one to make that stronger, and so Republicans have a better chance, and then. Probably in a more neutral year, they would they would easily win that one, but that did weaken NC three a little bit by taking some of their voters and so Republican voters.
So it is actually a possibility that you know you hear more people saying there's a little concern about NC three that could be three, you know, out of the fourteen that are are in contention there. We'll dive into details on favorables and unfavorables for the two United States Senate candidates here in North Carolina. After this, you're listening to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Many people believe buying a home requires a large down payment and years of saving, but that's not always the case. Across the country, there are programs designed to help first-time homebuyers take the next step toward home ownership.
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Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, one and seven point nine FM, WBT. Continuing the discussion with David Larson from CarolinaJournal dot com about our October Carolina Journal poll. We are going to now shift to the United States Senate race here across North Carolina. One, David, that if we went back eight months, we were talking about the most expensive, the most competitive. Senate race that is going to take place in the United States during these 2026 midterms would be the race between Michael Wattley and former eight-year governor Democrat Roy Cooper.
Before we get to the actual results of that race, we did ask about the favorability of Michael Wattley. This actually saw some pretty sizable advantage in comparison to our September poll. Wattley jumping seven full percentage points in terms of his favorability. His unfavorables dropping a couple of percentage points. Points as well.
What do you make of that? He has had a lot more appearances, and he's also started talking more about prices, which has been our number one topic. That people say that's the issue they're they're voting on. He was very focused on crime for a lot of the campaign, which it is an important issue, and a lot of people are concerned about it. But it wasn't near the top per se in voters' minds, and also just think he's.
He's Republicans are going to be open to his message. A lot of it was just can they be introduced to him, and he was not very well known.
So you saw, you know, last time there you had, let's see, maybe over thirty percent of people that said like thirty one percent of people who said they either have never heard of him or they have no opinion of him. This time that's come down a little bit to twenty eight percent.
So.
You know that's that's a little bit less than the favorables, but it's not a great number to to have. You know, almost a third of people saying they haven't heard of you or have no opinion of you. This close to the end, but it's a lot better than it had been. And so that is that has been his, you know, hill to climb. Here is that everybody knows Roy Cooper.
He's run this is his seventh statewide race. He's won the other six that he ran. You know he's been able to kind of slide by, and a lot of people's minds they have a vaguely positive opinion of him.
Some people call him, you know, Teflon Roy, on some kind of like they call that with Trump, where you would think things with COVID or with Helene would stick to him, but you ask voters, and often they're like, "Yeah, he did pretty well during those things." So for whatever reason, things you think would stick have not, and his he's had a general positive view, but very. A very high name ID, so people—it's hard to move the needle. If everybody knows him and they think they know what they think of him already, they—they've had their minds kind of set on what they think of him for maybe decades.
So that's tough to move a needle. It's much easier for Michael Watley to introduce himself, or on the flip side, for Roy Cooper to—I—to define Michael Watley in people's minds negatively. Yeah, the defining is a big portion of our current political system, whether you like it or not. David, you made a really good point about the those that have no opinion and never heard of. If we were having this conversation back in June, it would be one thing, but we're sitting here now, t minus less than two weeks until election day, and so the amount of time and the amount of places that you can physically be at one time or another in this very short time window that we're in right now does appear to be a major hurdle for.
Republican Senate candidate Michael Wattley. Let's talk about Roy Cooper in comparison to that, David. Just one and a half percent of people say that they have never heard of him. Five percent have no opinion. His favorables up a couple of ticks as well to fifty-two point two percent.
Unfavorable at forty-one point one. A little bit less than Wattley in terms of improvement, but that I guess is no real surprise with the no opinion and never heard ofs being just six percent compared to the high twenties for Wattley.
Well, Roy Cooper's favorables also increased in our poll from forty-seven percent now to fifty-two.
So once you break that fifty percent, you know that that's starting to get into a territory that's very dangerous for an opponent. If somebody else is getting most people in the state saying they they have favorable opinion of you, especially if they never heard of the other person or there's higher negatives.
So for whatever reason, as I said, Roy Cooper's Throughout his career, been able to do that. I think you know by presenting himself as kind of a generic candidate, that not going to rock any boats too hard. I do think you know people are talking a little bit. Oh, you know, is Michael Wattley going to hurt things down ticket and things like that? I don't think this is really Michael Wattley's like he's a bad candidate or anything like that.
I think he's also kind of a generic. Candidate that in another cycle would have done perfectly fine. It's just part of it. I think is the MAGA brand has reached its its low point at a very bad time for him. He's very connected to Trump, very connected to the MAGA brand, and it's just not something.
As you see, you know about a majority of people, you know, are don't feel good about Trump or the MAGA brand, and so. You know, I don't really think it's it's his fault per se. Like he's done anything drastic. It's not like a Mark Robinson situation where down the ticket there's there's going to be problems that he caused or anything like that. I think the problems are are coming from just the general context he's running in.
Yeah, and you talk about that close connection. We have seen the president and vice president both in the state over the last 40 days or so, stumping for a Michael Wattley, east, west, north, and south. And so we've seen a lot of those high profile. You're not going to find higher profile people in the Republican Party than the sitting president and vice president. We asked another question about favorability.
This is about the Democratic Socialists of America. We asked back in our September poll whether individuals thought.
Somebody like a Roy Cooper, if he were to win the United States Senate race, would govern and kind of agree with these Democratic Socialist ideas. We did see a majority agreeing with that, and then our favorability question: twenty-four point one percent of voters have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Socialists of America, compared to forty-five point nine that are unfavorable. Thirteen percent have no opinions. Almost seventeen percent have never heard of. This is one in four.
Of having a favorable opinion, a number that you were expecting to see. Actually, I I kind of am. I mean, I guess maybe because I live in the Triangle area and I've lived in a lot of cities. You know, you come across just so many people that are of this mindset.
So to see the very favorable, the people that you think of as the far left, only about ten percent, eleven percent, and then you see high numbers for never heard of, seventeen percent, thirteen percent, no opinion. And really, the strongest on the poll is the 42.4 percent that are very unfavorable.
So I think that's important to keep in mind. You know, if we don't want to be doomers and and just think everything's we're about to turn into a socialist republic, most people don't know what this is. They they're worried about prices. They're they're they're not really trying to have a socialist revolution. There's only maybe about 11 percent of people are, but they're they're not going to.
I think they they do have an impact in very specific races, especially the very high margin Democrat districts. You know, like in in the the Durham-Chapel Hill area congressional district, there's a lot of there there are there's a lot of socialist activity there. Maybe some in Asheville, but what notable is that the two major congressional candidates. I think they're competitive because they're explicitly running as anti-DSA candidates. Both Ager and Davis, and NC One and NC Eleven, the Democratic candidates, have signed the Promise to America, which is a denunciation of DSA.
So I think they know that if they went DSA in these kind of rural North Carolina districts, they they couldn't do it.
So I do think that's important to note. We'll bring you the top lines on the race between Michael Wattley and Roy Cooper coming up after this. You're listening to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Have you ever thought about the difference between paying rent and owning a home? When you rent, your monthly payment helps cover the cost of living there, but it usually doesn't build anything for your future.
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Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details. It's five thirty-six. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, one hundred seven point nine FM, WBT.
We are discussing our October Carolina Journal poll with the editor in chief of CarolinaJournal dot com, David Larson. All right, David. What we've all been waiting for: if the 2026 midterm elections for the United States Senate were held today, and you had to make a choice for whom would you vote? Michael Wattley, the Republican candidate, at 39.1 percent; Roy Cooper, the Democrat, at 49.4 percent. Between the Green Party candidate and the Libertarian candidate, about four percent with those two individuals combined.
While it is a pretty big improvement for Michael Wattley, he was down nearly. Fifteen points in our September Carolina Journal poll. This is still a ten-point margin with less than two weeks to go until Election Day. Yeah, if you're Republican leaders, I think you are pretty disappointed in to see these kind of numbers this late in the game. You thought we're going to be slowly chipping away.
But it's sort of solidified, you know. For for our last one, there was a huge undecided, so it was 15 points, but mostly because people knew what they thought of Cooper and they didn't know yet what they thought of Watley, and so that 15 points, you know, there was a 12 percent undecided.
So about half of those who were undecided have now made up their minds. There's only 7 percent undecided, and that's a little bit closer. Because most of those had been conservatives that were undecided in our last poll, so five out of the seven of them or so that looks like decided went went towards Wally.
So that's good for him that the conservatives are going to come home. It seems like, but it's not. It's not a great place to be, as I said. This this close, and you know, I think there's. There's questions to be asked about why why that is.
I think, as I said earlier, it's probably the the larger Republican context that this does happen. The midterms of the second term of a president, that president's party does often do poorly. There's also just a lot of enthusiasm on the on the Democrat side, and and I do think that the Democrats have picked some candidates.
So I'd wave my hand to turn the light back on. There, they they had to they did choose some candidates. They were pretty strong. I mean, you think like I said, Agar and Davis both seem pretty well suited for the races that they're in to be strong, and then Cooper as well.
So I think Democrats do have a pretty good a good cycle here.
So yeah. David, let me ask you this, and this may be a little bit of a historical context for maybe new folks to North Carolina, or those that maybe don't remember all of the past election results, which we can't fault them for. If this race ended today and we saw a margin that was nearly ten points, that would be very unusual in North Carolina for a statewide election. You brought up earlier Mark Robinson's gubernatorial race in twenty twenty four. There was obviously a lot of external factors and issues that caused that race to be so lopsided.
But historically, David, when you look at these statewide races, these things are decided by one, two, three, maybe at the max four points. This would be very abnormal for a statewide election. I mean, it's a race that you know Ted Budd just won. You know, statewide race. You had Tom Tillis win it.
It's something that Republicans have historically, you know, even though they haven't been that great at winning governor and attorney general in North Carolina, they've been able to win U.S. Senate seats. As I said, I do think it's it's more the wider context because you look at the rest of the country. You know, this was supposed to be the most expensive race in the country because this is a state that's seen as the the middle zone where it's a battleground and both sides are about on even ground. They did not think that they were going to be spending money in Kansas and in Alaska and in Texas and Iowa and Ohio.
Those are supposed to be states. That are in the bag, and so you can worry about a, a Michigan or North Carolina or Georgia. But if they give up on Georgia and North Carolina, as they they have not been spending money here, and instead of spending money in Kansas and Alaska, I think that's just the the broader context that it's not necessarily something happening in North Carolina. It's something that's happening more broadly. Yeah, and we've been covering.
Even though the president and vice president have been in the state, we've seen these major Republican super PAC groups pulling millions of dollars out of North Carolina in the final weeks of this election cycle. We'll keep a close eye on that as it continues to unfold. All right, let's quickly touch on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Thirty-nine point seven percent said they would back Sarah Stevens, the Republican. Forty-seven point three percent, Anita Earls, the Democrat.
Republicans over the last couple of cycles, David, have been very. Good at winning these statewide judicial races, unless our poll is way off or something changes dramatically. This would be a break in that trend as well. Yeah, I think this is just trending as generic Republican. Basically, people don't often know the name of the Supreme Court justices, and so I think this this is here is how we feel about the Republicans.
You know, there is party label now on on Supreme Court justices, so they see that and they pick. The Democrat at the moment. I also think Anita Earls has a little bit more name ID to the extent because that either of them do because she's the incumbent. But fortunately for Republicans, you know, it would be a status quo. It would just keep the current balance five to two.
So it's not the end of the world for them. They they maintain a a pretty strong majority on that court. Let's jump down to the most important issues. You highlighted this a little bit earlier when we were chatting about a couple of our other questions. No surprise here: inflation and the cost of living, thirty-one point eight percent.
Say that's their biggest issue, followed by economy and the jobs, and jobs at eleven point four percent.
Social security and Medicaid, nine point two. We continue down the list, lower percentages: immigration, national security. I did find interesting: gas prices is on here. But only one point six percent of people. David, is it the economy stupid?
Is that what the conversation that we're having here? Yeah, I think a lot of these, you know, you can kind of bundle up into things are too expensive, you know, because gas prices and energy costs and healthcare costs, all those. I think, yeah, I think just because gas prices is towards the bottom doesn't mean it was not a major thing. I think. It's just part of the top one, which is inflation and cost of living.
Sure, because cost of living is impacted by gas prices, incredibly, and and transportation, obviously, but also, you know, in the cost of things at the supermarket that take gas to deliver them, and just pretty much everything across the board, is gas prices has an impact.
So I do think it is the economy stupid, as Bill Clinton, I believe, said. That that people are concerned about that they want, and I do think that's part of what has hurt Trump, is he came in as somebody saying I will lower the costs, and Biden was getting all the blame, rightfully so. You know, you could say there's there was a lot of inflation under Biden, but people expected okay, Trump's going to be Making some major actions on this, it'll bring things down. And then you see right around his, you know, the day where he announced all the tariffs, you can see on the chart his popularity kind of took a dip and hasn't really recovered from them. From them, because it seems like something happened that made the cost of living worse, and and the reasoning for it wasn't all that clear to people.
That's my own. Analysis there, but I do think yeah, cost of living has been has been the top, and you do have things that you mentioned crime as something that has been a major factor in Michael Walley's messaging. That's six percent, so you know it's it's not not an important issue to people, but just the crime rate, murder rate, things like that have come down a little bit from recent years. Interesting too to see things like climate change, which are a major thing to certain people, not really that big of a deal. Three percent of people are concerned about that, but yeah, definitely messaging wise, I do think the campaigns that have focused, honed in on costs have have maybe caught fire a bit better.
Speaking of costs, seventy point two percent of voters did support the gas tax suspension that we saw back a couple of weeks ago in the General Assembly. All right, David, real quick, as we round out our conversation of our most recent Carolina Journal poll, there are three constitutional amendments on the ballot. One deals with property tax limits, known as a levy limit. The other puts a new three and a half percent income tax in the state constitution, and the third codifies some voter ID laws. Across the state, while we've seen a little bit of movements, particularly on the property tax limit amendment, all of these are either at or very close to sixty.
Some even creeping up, like the voter ID amendment, to sixty-five percent. Again, same thing here. Unless something changes dramatically in a very short time period, it would appear all three of these are probably going to pass with flying colors. They are difficult ones to run against. I think just if you ask people if they want their taxes to, you know, be secured at a level and not go much higher, generally people are going to say, "Yeah, let's let's lock that in." The one that you did mention, I do think the local parties and local, you know, officials have had some success at pushing back on the property tax levy limit because I think that's.
Seen as a threat locally to to some officials, and so they've been pushing that locally.
So you have seen, you know, that says 21 percent are strongly opposed to it. The other ones are are not as opposed. You don't have as much opposition to them, I think.
So that's maybe the one that if there's more movement in that, potentially it could not pass. But I do think all three are very likely to pass. We unfortunately have a couple more questions we don't have time to get into, but we encourage our audience to visit our website carolinajournal dot com. Click on the poll tab, and you can check out the entire PDF of the poll. We've got our cross tabs; all of that information is available over on our website carolinajournal dot com.
We appreciate the update this morning. The editor in chief of Carolina Journal, David Larson, joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Have you ever thought about the difference between paying rent and owning a home? When you rent, your monthly payment helps cover the cost of living there, but it usually doesn't build anything for your future. Homeownership is different.
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We have now got a full week of early voting under our belt here in North Carolina. To walk us through the latest totals and let us know where all the various parties are falling and what the turnout looks like, Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us once again on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Andy, we chatted earlier this week, and Republicans had gotten. Themselves in a very deep hole after Thursday, Friday, and a couple of weekend sites last week.
What have we seen over the early parts of this week, transitioning into the latter? Yeah.
Well, first of all, turnout's way up compared to previous elections. We're already over a million votes in. You know, it's up about you know about a couple hundred thousand higher than normal for midterm elections, and most of that has been for Democrats and unaffiliated voters. Republican turnout's about the same as it has been on average for the last couple of midterm elections, but their percentage wise is. Much lower because so many more Democrats and unaffiliateds have come out to vote in early voting, especially during that first day.
They really came out of the gates strong. Since then, there's been some convergence. Democrats are around down to around 43 of all turnout are Democratic. That compares to 41 normally, but Republicans are still deep in hole. They're around at 22 and a half percent normally.
They're up around 30.
So.
So there's some convergence, but it's still advantage Democrats right now. Yeah, and you mentioned that 22 and a half percent number. While that's low, Andy, back when we chatted earlier this week, it was below 20 percent. I think it was 19.8 or something like that, or 19.2.
So we have seen some small gains there. Million dollar question, or shake your crystal ball, Andy? Is is there enough time for Republicans to make up this hole and make out make up this advantage over the next week or so? Probably not.
Now I do expect Democrats by the end of this week, after the last couple of days of weekday voting, are counted. You know, we're going to have the Thursday numbers come in later on this morning, and then we've got the Friday numbers that'll come in on on Saturday. And I expect you know that that will that will that gap will. Decrease even more. Democrats will probably be around in the forty forty one percent range, which is normal for them.
Republicans will probably be up around twenty four ish percent, so still in the hole for them. And then generally over the weekend, Democrats pad that lead because not every county is open on the weekend, and the ones that are open are disproportionately in urban, Democratic-leaning areas.
So then we've got next week. Republicans will probably close on.
Next week, but they they're probably still going to be in a bit of a hole when we get to election day. I've asked you this in the past.
Now that you've had the chance to look at about a week of early voting data, traditionally Republicans have had very strong turnouts on election day. As you've watched these totals come in, you have any thoughts as to whether something like that might materialize or not? It's probably Republicans are going to outnumber Democrats on Election Day. The question is by how much. You know, we've seen like with the absentee voting that Democrats are starting to shift away from that mail voting more towards in-person voting.
It appears we were wondering when Democratic turnout was low a few weeks ago. With that male voting, does this mean the Democratic turnout in general is going to be low? We've got the answer. No, they're they're voting. They're just voting in a different way.
The thing was with Republicans. Republicans have traditionally been really really strong. On election day, but then in twenty four, we they had this whole bank your vote campaign where they really encouraged Republicans to vote during the early voting period.
So the big question we have now is: Are Republicans reverting back to their old style, like Democrats are apparently doing vis a vis mail voting, or is this just lower turnout relatively for Republicans? And we're not really going to have the answer for that. Until seven thirty on election night, when we start getting the actual numbers for those, so it's it's an interesting guess that we can make. Andy, I've been asked this question a lot over the last week. I'm sure you have as well.
Currently, right now, unaffiliated or UNA turnout is thirty four percent. Everybody always likes to ask, "Well, where are those individuals breaking?" Is it fair to say that the unaffiliated turnout probably mirrors what we're seeing in comparison to Democrat and Republican as of right now? Right now, kind of. I think what you're seeing, and I think I've mentioned this with you before, is that. Independents, unaffiliated voters, most of them are actually what we call weak partisans, so they tend to behave like one party or another.
So I suspect one reason that you saw this relatively high unaffiliated turnout so far is that those are the unaffiliated voters that behave like Democrats.
So just as Democrats really came out of the gate, so did unaffiliated.
Now they are going down, but they're going down less rapidly than the Democrats are because you also have other unaffiliates that behave like. Republicans, and we also have to know that you know unaffiliateds are up around you know the mid thirties, but unaffiliated voters are forty percent of the electorate.
So their turnout relative to their proportion in the electorate is still low, and that's that has been the case every election year. Unaffiliated always underperforms on turnout, and that's no different this year. It just looks bigger relative to what it was. Yeah, when we look at the final early voting totals from twenty twenty two, the unaffiliateds are at twenty nine point nine percent when all of the early voting was said and done.
So, right there at thirty percent, and if we look at those numbers right now, they are performing a couple of points higher than they were just a couple of years ago. Yeah, yeah, and and and so that's good. And part of that reason is that the proportion of voters who are unaffiliated has gone higher.
Now it's cracked forty percent since then, and that is something to keep in mind. Whereas in previous elections, you know, there were you know one hundred thousand more Democrats, two hundred thousand more Democrats.
Now there's roughly parity in the total number of registrations between Republicans and Democrats.
So this relatively low Republican turnout is kind of even. Worse in the context of the the higher voter registration that they have than they used to have, so they're a smaller portion of the total electorate than than they should be. It's the same thing with unaffiliated. Unaffiliated relative growth looks impressive until you realize no, they're still underperforming. They're just underperforming a little bit less, and their numbers are going down.
I don't think they'll dip below thirty again, but you could be looking at you know thirty three thirty percent of the total turnout by the time. Time we're done with this thing. And a final question for you: This middle week of early voting has always been what I've called the sleepy week. There don't you don't typically see a very high turnout. That has been very abnormal this election cycle.
You mentioned that we're already over a million early votes cast here in North Carolina. Long lines, hour hour and a half long lines at many early voting locations across the state. Will that continue into next week, the final week of early voting? It probably will. Usually, you know, people start getting really interested, and you get some of these late bloomers as far as turning on to voting.
That'll come on, so I'm expecting we'll have similar turnout. You know, we have so many questions here, and one of those questions is: Have Democrats kind of? Done, you know, done their deal as it were. Have they have they really come out and voted? They cast their votes and they're done.
And we're going to see, you know, relative poor performance among Democrats last week, or is this? Indicative of a larger turnout that is happening, and that Democrats will be able to roll this thing through and maintain relatively elevated turnout throughout. There's a lot of interesting questions that we're not really going to have the answers to until more people come out and we get into this time next week. Yep, and we'll be chatting with Andy a couple of times next week to break down some of those details. For those that want to follow along and keep track at home, we encourage you to visit our website carolinaelections.com and click on the Vote Tracker tab.
We appreciate the update as always. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News app. And that's going to do it for a Friday edition. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT.
We're back with you Monday morning, five to six, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, one hundred seven point nine FM, WBT. Ready to feel more energized and in control of your health? If you've tried diet and exercise but still aren't seeing the results you're looking for, it may be time to explore a different approach. At OrderlyMeds.com, you can connect with licensed medical providers through a simple virtual process, all from the comfort of home, and find out if a GLP-1 treatment may be right for you. Learn more at OrderlyMeds.com.
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