A whole lot is riding on North Carolina in this election. Maybe even all the marbles. Which is why data scientists at Insightus are currently all over the NC State Board of Elections’ daily voting data-dumps like white on rice, seeking trends hidden therein. And boy, are they finding a shocking trend!
They’re certainly not alone in that, with the likes of CNN and HuffPo having already noted that registered Dems are currently leading GOPers in absentee-by-mail ballot requests. But a ballot request is not an actual vote, and anyway NC’s rich demographic voter data (providing the name, age, gender, race, address and voting history of every early voter) cries out for a much deeper analysis. You don’t need to be “absent” to be an absentee-by-mail (ABM) voter in North Carolina, so ABM data provide insights into much more than just who’s in town this month and who’s not.
So without further ado, here are the headline findings from Insightus’ Week 2 early voting analysis.