Insightus’s twice-weekly analysis of North Carolina absentee-by-mail (ABM) ballot tabulation has just been updated for the period through Oct. 12th. And I’m gob-smacked.
What seemed on October 3rd (when Insightus broke the story) like a sort-of-a-maybe interesting little blip, and then began to gel into something of a tantalizing trend line in Insightus’s October 10 update (which kos was kind enough to headline on the front page here under the headline Holy Crap), has now (with the latest update) become an unmistakable reality.
Republican voters in the Tar Heel State aren’t. Voting, that is.
With about 33,000 ballots now tabulated, it remains the case (as first reported on October 10th) that Republican absentee-by-mail ballots are down compared to 2012 by about 50%, while Democratic ballots are up a hair. That’s a big deal a yuuuge deal because it flies in the face of all previous electoral history in NC, where ABM voting has always been the almost exclusive prerogative of elderly (and arch-conservative) Republicans. But not this year.
The Year of the Trump Slump.
And with the number of tabulated absentee ballots now rising into the range that makes it reasonable to start looking at the cross-tabs, things just keep getting ever more gob-smacking. Take, for instance, Insightus’s first look at Republican and Democratic ABM voters by age group (see chart, above). The Trump Slump in North Carolina isn’t hitting just one or two Republican age groups. It’s an across-the-board collapse, from first-time voting 18 year-olds to the elderly (68+). And that collapse is leaving Democratic voters of the same age groups untouched.
It’s like an electoral Passover. Or the Republican Rapture. I just ran out of words to express my astonishment.
Find much more voter data porn at Insightus’s October 12 update.