Friday, September 14, 2012

N.C.'s new voters: Overwhelmingly minority and independent

North Carolina's registered voters are becoming significantly more independent as well as more racially and ethnically diverse.

Rob Schofield at the Progressive Pulse blog picked up on some interesting voter registration trends that he spotted on a Pope-Civitas website called Carolina Transparency. Since Obama took office, North Carolina has netted 115,000 new voters. Schofield points out two trends, one that seemingly helps Republicans and one that seemingly helps Democrats.

The first: The net 115,000 gain results from a loss of 110,000 Democrats, a loss of 8,000 Republicans, a gain of 222,000 unaffiliated voters and a gain of 11,000 Libertarians. That large shift from Democrat to unaffiliated would appear to be good news for Republicans.

The second: The net 115,000 gain comes almost entirely from minority voters. The voter rolls today have 9,000 new white voters, 53,000 new black voters and 53,000 new "other" voters, including Latino, Asian and other minorities. That would appear to be good news for Democrats.

This might not have a huge effect on election results this November. The 115,000 net new voters are only 1.8 percent of all N.C. voters. But it's fascinating to see such clear trend lines.

-- Taylor Batten

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like very good news for Republicans - that African-Americans are finally moving off the plantation.

Europeanexpat said...

Wonder how many of them are the people who left democrat paradise of MA, NY, MD, NJ, MI etc.

Jim said...

"...racially and ethnically diverse..."

The contemporary religion: "diversalist". . .or maybe "inclusionary diversalist"!

Anonymous said...

While we're talking about minority voters and who votes for who, I need someone who is of the below persuasions to explain some things to me:

1) How could any Jewish person possibly vote for Obama, particularly after he has spent the past week dissing the Israeli PM, apologizing to Muslims over hurt feelings and chosing to go to a fundraiser in Vegas while Arabs were committing terrorst acts against America?

2) I'm still waiting on an explanation for the "You are black, therefore you will vote straight-party Democrat or you aren't really black" doctrine. Since Democrats want you to be dependent on the government for everything, and to blame The White Man for every problem you ever have, why would this be something you would want to vote for?

Garth Vader said...

J,

Perhaps American Jews are Americans first, just as Italian-Americans, German-Americans, etc. Remember that most American Jews don't have Israeli heritage but are instead descendants of Polish, German, Czech, Russian, etc. immigrants.

Israel is a country and Judaism is a religion.

Most American Jews and many Israelis do not share your foaming-at-the-mouth warmongering on the Israel/Palestine situation. American Jews appreciate Israeli independence and Gallup found them the most steadfastly-opposed group regarding the Iraq war.

In Israel, Netenyahu's Likud party is now attempting to govern without a coalition majority as the centrist Kadima party left the coalition due to some of Bibi's more hardline positions.

It's funny that you write on one hand that Blacks shouldn't be viewed as a monolithic voting bloc, while on the other hand you expect Jews to fall in line with the Likudniks.

Skippy said...

So the Democrat party is bleeding voters? There can be no other read on this if you lose 110,000 voters. Who saw this coming after the historic landslide election back in 2010? And what exactly has changed since that shellacking?

NCdirtdigger said...

Overwhelming minority? Bit of an oxymoron wouldn't you say?

BiBr said...

I'm with you on this one "J."

Anonymous said...

The US Constitution is a living document.

The US Population is the envy of the world and a source of innovation and Olympic pride from Vivian Thomas to Women's soccer.