The gap closed again, but North Carolina needs to wake up

Let's be honest. Yesterday was a good day in the numbers. Today is a mixed one, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

The good news: the gap keeps closing

Almost a million more early ballots came in since yesterday's pull. We're now at 6.68 million.

In the 23 states that actually register voters by party, these are hard counts, not a model. Democrats have cast 50.3% of early ballots and Republicans 28.5%. That's still a big Democratic lead, but it's down to 21.8 points, from 22.7 yesterday. That's two days in a row the gap shrank.

Here's why. Of the new ballots that came in overnight in those states, Democrats cast 45 of every 100 and Republicans cast 28. Democrats are still banking more, but by a smaller margin than the lead they built on early mail ballots. Every day that keeps happening, their head start gets smaller.

Ohio and Georgia are holding

Ohio keeps doing Ohio things. Republicans lead the modeled early vote by 14.5 points, almost 55,000 ballots, and the lead grew overnight.

Georgia jumped from 381,000 early votes to 552,000. Democrats lead the modeled split by about 2 points, and that edge got slightly smaller overnight even with 171,000 more people voting. That's a fight, not a blowout.

Nevada is small so far, but the Democratic edge there dropped from 8 points to about 4 as the number of ballots more than doubled.

The bad news: North Carolina

This is the one I'm not going to sugarcoat. North Carolina opened in-person early voting yesterday, and the state's ballot count went from about 33,000 to 237,000 in one day.

Here's what day one looked like by party registration, straight from the NC State Board of Elections files:

• 2022, first day of in-person voting: Republicans cast 29% of early ballots. Democrats were ahead by 13 points.
• 2024, first day of in-person voting: Republicans cast 33%. Democrats were ahead by 3 points. Trump won the state.
• 2026, first day of in-person voting: Republicans cast 20%. Democrats are ahead by 27 points.

Come on. That's not where we need to be. North Carolina is where Republicans proved early voting works in 2024, and on day one this year registered Republicans showed up at a lower rate than they did in 2022.

Is it one day? Yes. A lot of unaffiliated voters lean right, and party registration tells you who voted, not how they voted. But one day is all it takes to start falling behind, and the whole point of voting early is to stop handing Democrats a three-week head start.

What to do about it

If you're in North Carolina, early voting is open now. Go. Then text five people and ask when they're going. If you're anywhere else, find your early voting dates and do the same.

I'll be watching North Carolina every morning on the early vote tracker. I want to see that 20 turn into 30.

I'm your Common Sense Gay.

Sources: North Carolina numbers by party and by day from the NC State Board of Elections absentee files. Other state totals and party splits from the Election Data Guy early vote tracker. Georgia and Ohio splits are modeled, since those states don't register voters by party. Daily history on my early vote tracker.