I am heading off to Vanderbilt University tomorrow to lecture to John Geer’s introductory American politics class, and I am pretty sure there will be a relative in the audience!
I have been slashing away at the North Carolina absentee ballot file tonight, just to show the students what kind of ballot tracking goes in under the early voting regime.
One thing I stress at this point: there is not a lot to be learned. I know reporters love to see these early numbers as indicators of something about the campaign, but we are talking about only 134,00o total ballot requests, and as you can see by the figure, only about a quarter have been returned.
The total expected turnout in North Carolina is well over four million.
In short, this ain’t a lot of ballots. The pictures are pretty, but there is not a lot you can conclude.
P.S. To my Political Science 311 students: you’ll be generating these graphs after break!