Pedal-to-the-metal

Democrats go pedal-to-the-metal on early voting

In North Carolina, black turnout is key to the party's hopes of swamping Trump.

By Katie Glueck

Democrats are in the midst of an all-out blitz to turn out the early vote, hoping to bank enough votes to overwhelm Donald Trump even before the polls open on Election Day.

Nowhere is the urgency more apparent than in North Carolina where, thanks in part to restrictions on early voting enacted by the Republican legislature, Democrats hold a lead in ballots cast so far but are running behind their 2012 pace.

In places that are home to significant African-American populations, like Greensboro’s Guilford County and Winston-Salem’s Forsyth County, Democrats are still smarting from legislative changes that significantly restricted the number of polling sites available for the duration of in-person early voting — a method frequently utilized by minority voters.

Guilford County alone went from 16 polling sites available for the entire early vote period in 2012 to only one location open for the first week of 2016 — and even that site was not open on the first weekend of early voting.

Bill Clinton rallied here Sunday with local Democrats like state Sen. Gladys Robinson to sound the alarm about the importance of casting early ballots in a state that is essential to Trump's path to victory.

“I get upset when I don’t see that as many of you have turned to the polls as we did a couple years ago,” admonished Robinson, an African-American Democrat from the area, as she warmed up for the former president. “We have to get to the polls. We have to take everybody with us.”

Her urgent plea — amplified minutes later by the former president — is a recognition of the headwinds North Carolina Democrats are facing, four years after Mitt Romney narrowly carried the state and after the number of early voting locations was reduced. As of Saturday, only 37 percent of the total number of Democrats who voted early in Guilford County in 2012 had done so in 2016, though that number was expected to tick up some as Sunday’s full numbers trickled in, and as the state holds more expanded early-voting hours this week.

“For Guilford and Forsyth, particularly with Guilford, the issue is, can they get at least some make-up of where they’ve been behind that’s due to the early voting changes?” asked Michael Bitzer, an expert on the early vote at North Carolina’s Catawba College, who provided those comparisons to 2012.

That’s why Democrats are feeling the pressure this week to at least close the gap with their 2012 performance before in-person early voting, which tends to benefit their party, ends on Saturday and Republicans move to run up the score on Election Day.

“This is a critical time because this is the preferred method of voting for Democrats,” said Michael McDonald, an expert on the early vote who runs the U.S. Elections Project. “They are certainly mounting up a lead in the early vote. It’s just, is that lead going to be good enough?”

According to McDonald’s analysis, Democrats are steadily closing on their 2012 performance, and “on the trajectory they’re on, if they keep gaining ground as they are, they should meet or exceed their 2012 levels by the end of the week.”

But a significant piece of that effort hinges on African-American turnout in the final days of early voting.

On Sunday — a day on which African-Americans tend to vote in big numbers as a result of “souls to the polls” efforts that encourage church-goers to head to the ballot box after services — Democrats made a major push to close the deficit, and there are signs they made some progress.

“It was a big day for the Democrats,” McDonald said. “Without a doubt. 48.7 percent of people who voted were Democrats, 31.9 percent were African Americans…and they did make up some ground. There were 1,136 Democrats over their 2012 number.”

Democrats are now ahead of Republicans by 13.5 percent in the early vote, he said, but it may not be enough: Republicans are overperforming their own 2012 early vote numbers.

"Until they actually exceed 2012 numbers," McDonald said of Democrats, "I think they're going to be very nervous about where they're sitting with early voting in North Carolina."

"Republicans tend to win on Election Day," said Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, in a recent interview.

Still, the Clinton campaign stresses that turnout is on the upswing for Democrats now that more polling sites have opened. They cite data from the North Carolina Board of Elections showing that Democratic turnout, and particularly black turnout, has expanded at a rapid clip since more polling sites were added last Thursday, noting that in Guilford, 549 African-Americans voted last Wednesday, but 7,496 did on Thursday.

One North Carolina Democratic operative working on several races in the state expressed confidence that the Clinton campaign would close the gap with 2012 African American turnout, saying that on Sunday, about 32 percent of votes cast were from African Americans, but the total share of the African American vote is only expected to be around 22 percent.

"I think the numbers are really catching up," the operative said. "Obviously a lot of that started Thursday, Friday, Sunday voting, we're continuing to see a huge push in a lot more traditional African American communities for folks continuing voting this week."

Over the next week, both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are expected to campaign in North Carolina, building on visits from Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, who have all been in the state in the last week or so. The Clinton campaign has also launched aggressive advertising campaigns on African-American radio stations and in black newspapers, in addition to their extensive outreach efforts at churches and historically black colleges.

A Clinton adviser stressed that a robust surrogate operation would continue in the state’s African American communities through Election Day, even though there is no early voting allowed next Sunday.

“While early voting does conclude on [Nov.] 5, on the final Sunday we do plan to have some major events geared toward the African American community in order to drum up enthusiasm for [Election Day voting],” said the Clinton adviser.

Added Bitzer, “It is critical to get black votes out for Democrats to remain competitive this year, but the number of days to target on this population is growing smaller, and that will mean much more energy and attention for Election Day.”

This past Sunday set the tone for the final push in the African American community, and it’s clear that early voting is still the emphasis.

Bill Clinton started his Sunday with a visit to a black church, where he talked up the importance of “souls to the polls” — the last Sunday, according to state rules, on which voting would be allowed. He reiterated that message in front of the Greensboro crowd later in the day.

“No state has been a battleground for how to define the future of this country more than North Carolina,” he said. “This is the last Sunday of early voting. A lot of people fought for that.”

The sense that voting opportunities were under threat in North Carolina permeated several polling stations in heavily African American neighborhoods across the state, with a number of voters pointing to restrictions on early voting times as a motivator for turning out.

“That’s one of the driving forces for me,” said Derrick Holland, a minister, who had participated in a “souls to the polls” march to a Greensboro polling station from his church — where he said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Democratic civil rights activist, had made a get-out-the-vote speech earlier in the day. “It’s something that was fought for for so long. Now people are trying to take that away from us. I don’t think that’s fair.”

He and his wife voted for Hillary Clinton.

An hour away, in Raleigh, a steady stream of voters flowed into the Chavis Community Center, which served as a recreational haven for African-Americans during segregation, and remains a pillar of the community. Some Republicans wanted to eliminate the site as an early voting station, a decision that was ultimately blocked in a bipartisan fashion. Now, it has become so central to Democratic early voting efforts that Hillary Clinton stopped by two Sundays ago.

Efforts to remove Chavis from early voting options “was part of the suppression, more than anything else,” said Rep. Rosa Gill, a Democrat who represents the area and was in attendance on Sunday. “It’s heavily African-American. I think it was part of the voter suppression.”

Wake County, home to Raleigh, has been a brighter spot for Democratic early vote performance -- in part due to nine early voting locations that opened two weeks ago and another 11 that opened Thursday. The county is crucial to Democratic prospects — it is the second-biggest county in the state, and Democrats must run up big numbers there in order to compensate for the redder rural areas. As of Saturday night, 54 percent of Wake County’s 2012 early total was already in, according to Bitzer’s calculations, and that number was expected to climb. Heavily Democratic Mecklenburg County, the biggest in the state, he said, was also showing signs of strength for Democrats.

Back in Greensboro Sunday afternoon, as another Clinton organizer warmed up the crowd for Clinton, he spelled out the stakes of the next five days.

“If we ensure every single registered Democrat in Guilford County gets out to vote,” the organizer said, “we can win this election this week.”