The first day of early voting is over in North Carolina, and the numbers show interesting differences from 2020.
The United States has gone through many changes in the four years since the country's last presidential election. So it's hard to know what, if anything, can be gleaned from comparing one day of voting statistics.
In-person voting saw a 1.3% increase from 2020 to 2024. However, mail-in absentee voting saw a major decrease, down to 77,661 from a whopping 568,188.
So after the first day of early voting 428,299 ballots were cast in 2024, that number was 916,787 in 2020.
That major shift in mail-in voting can be attributed to the country being in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, causing many more people to request mail-in ballots to avoid standing in a crowd to vote.
On the first day of in-person early voting in 2024, Republicans and men turned out in higher numbers than in 2020.
Registered Republicans made up 122,765 voters in 2024 but only 95,202 in 2020. Men made up 153,782 voters in 2024 but only 143,629 in 2020.
Meanwhile Democrats and women saw lower turnout in 2024: 128,493 and 183,190 as opposed to 166,489 and 187,269 respectively.