Final Pre-Election Analysis of North Carolina Early Voters

I noticed this morning that the North Carolina State Board of Elections has updated their early voting data and added a few more early voters. In all, they now report that 495,828 North Carolinians have voted early in advance of today's primary. The vast majority of these early voters (406,125) are casting their ballots in the Democratic primary.

While the number of those voting early in the Democratic primary has increased slightly since I posted on Sunday, the race, gender and party balance of these voters has remained the same.

	% of Early Voters
Men	38.7%
Women	60.8%
White	56.5%
Black	39.9%
White Women	33.2%
White Men	23.1%
Democrat	84.1%
Unaffiliated	15.8%

I've already blogged about how the composition of these early voters would seem to strongly favor Obama. So let's look at some other information about early voters.

The congressional district with the most early voters is district 4. This district includes both Chapel Hill and Durham and has a significant African American population (about 21%). The district with the second most early voters is the 11th district, which is Heath Shuler's district in the western most tip of the state. This district has a much smaller minority population and is often viewed as a more conservative district in the state.

Some other statistics of early voters:

# of Early Voters in Top Cities
Charlotte 39,216
Raleigh 23,881
Greensboro 20,596
Durham 19,276
Fayetteville 14,728
Winston Salem 14,182
Chapel Hill 13,628
Asheville 11,051
Wilmington 10,071

Precincts with most Early Voters
Nashville (Nash County) 1,099
Pittsboro (Chatham County) 1,096
West Williams (Chatham County) 1,073
Precinct 44 (Durham County) 1,041

And your totally pointless statistic:

Most popular first names of Early Voters
James 10,577
Mary 8,953
William 8,337
John 7,871
Robert 7,616

Check the blog tonight as I will be live-blogging as the returns come in. Polls close in Indiana at 6pm (though since parts of the state are in the Eastern Time Zone, they effectively close at 7pm). Polls close in North Carolina 30 minutes later.