Black voters in North Carolina cast about 600,000 early ballots, 1.5 times as many as in 2022, according to state early-vote figures reported Sunday. Polls open Tuesday for the midterms, and across the South the people whose districts were redrawn this year are showing up before they are even asked.
North Carolina counted a record 2.8 million early ballots over 17 days, 35.7% of registered voters, up from 29.0% in 2022. Within that, voters aged 18 to 25 cast more than 200,000 ballots, nearly double the last cycle. Republican share of the early vote fell from 31% to 26%.
The pattern is not limited to one state. In Virginia, early-vote data shows Black voters turning out above the levels of the 2022 midterms and the 2025 governor’s race, and election analysts there say the state is on track for the highest Black share of the vote in its modern history. Chaz Nuttycombe of the election data group State Navigate pointed to one precinct in Franklin City, which is 80% Black, where he said turnout was “twice the number of votes” of earlier elections. In Georgia, VoteHub’s count of the first day of early voting put Black voters at more than 36% of ballots cast.
Why now? Voting rights advocates say the cause is backlash. Bloomberg Law reported last week that they attribute the surge to a reaction against Republican attempts to gerrymander Black voters into new congressional districts. That follows the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which NAACP general counsel Kristen Clarke said emboldened lawmakers in former slaveholding states to dismantle majority-Black districts. Louisiana has already lost one. In Alabama, the Black voting-age population in Rep. Shomari Figures’ district fell from about 49% to 40%. In Tennessee, Memphis was split among three districts, ending the state’s only Black Democratic seat, which is now contested by Rep. Justin J. Pearson.
Virginia voters also have their own question on the ballot: an amendment on restoring voting rights to people with felony convictions. Wes Bellemy, a political science professor at Virginia State University, cited it, along with threats to federal jobs, as a motivator. LaKeisha Cook of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy said of the mood, “There is some real excitement and energy and momentum that we’re feeling.”
Early turnout is not results. Election officials do not count early ballots by candidate until Tuesday, race-reported data covers only states that record it, and some results may take days. Nobody should read a turnout number as a verdict.
But the people who drew these lines did so on the bet that Black voters would be divided, discouraged or diluted. The early numbers say they are, instead, lining up. What happens to those ballots in the redrawn districts is the part Tuesday settles, and the part the courts will keep arguing about afterward.
Have your say