(WGHP) — North Carolina has long been a battleground state, but how firmly are those party lines drawn?
We looked at voter registration data for North Carolina as of Feb. 17, 2024, collected by the North Carolina State Board of Elections. While these numbers do not necessarily indicate how many people will vote in each election or who they may ultimately decide to vote for, it does give a sense of which parties have the strongest support in the state.
In North Carolina, a majority of voters are registered as unaffiliated. More than 2.7 million of the state’s registered voters, or 36.8%, are unaffiliated. During the primary election, unaffiliated voters can choose which primary they would like to vote in.
At just under a third each, 32.3% of registered voters are affiliated with the Democratic Party and 30.0% are affiliated with the Republican Party.
Voters can also register with smaller parties, but none have made more than a marginal impact on voter rolls. The Libertarian and No Labels parties both account for 0.1%, and the Consitution and Green parties have so few registered voters they do not add up to even a tenth of a percentage.
Wake County, which has more registered voters than any other county in the state, has a majority of unaffiliated voters with 42.8% unaffiliated, 34.8% Democratic and 21.5% Republican.
The next five counties with the highest voter totals — Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Durham and Cumberland counties — all have a majority of Democrats, followed by unaffiliated voters and then Republican voters.
The state's counties with the 7th and 8th most voters, Buncombe and New Hanover, both lean unaffiliated. Buncombe has more Democrats than Republicans, and New Hanover has more Republicans than Democrats.
Union and Gaston counties round out the top 10 with a majority of Republicans followed by unaffiliated voters and Democrats.
Looking strictly at the Democratic and Republican parties, 55 counties lean right and 45 lean left.
Randolph County has the heaviest Republican lean with 35,002 more Republicans than Democrats (49,894 to 14,892), accounting for 52.1% of the county's 95,844 registered voters.
Randolph is followed by Davidson County with 34,848 more Republicans (56,158 to 21,310) and Union County with 30,758 more Republicans (70,663 to 39,905).
Mecklenburg has the heaviest Democratic lean with 167,028 more Democrats than Republicans (323,148 to 156,120), accounting for 40.9% of the county's 789,793 registered voters.
Wake County follows Mecklenburg with 110,008 more Democrats (286,740 to 176,732) and Durham County with 101,183 more Democrats (124,577 to 23,394).
Over 53% of the state's Democrats are in just 10 out of the state's 100 counties, those being Mecklenburg, Wake, Guilford, Durham, Forsyth, Cumberland, Buncombe, New Hanover, Orange and Pitt.
