On Friday October 19, 152,356 North Carolinians voted early. This is down from 156,129 from Thursday, but up from the 118,961 who voted on the second day of One Stop Early Voting in 2008. These numbers include mail ballots as well as in-person ballots. Overall, turnout is up 26.6% from the same time in 2008. People in North Carolina are clearly motivated to vote this year.
Click on the picture below for a full sized chart.
Based on the demographics and party registration of who is voting, we can make an estimate of exactly how many votes. This is not the same as the actual vote totals, but because voting is relatively polarized in NC, it is probably not very far from the truth (see methodology from the previous diary).
Turnout among minorities and white Democrats is up over 2008, and as a result Obama probably received about 85,744 votes on Friday (compared to 70,802 votes on this Friday in 2008):
But turnout is also up among Republicans over 2008. As a result of this, Romney received an estimated 66,612 votes on Friday, whereas John McCain got about 48,159 votes on the 2nd day of early voting in 2008:
So what does this high turnout mean?