The 2022 midterm elections are quickly approaching and those running in North Carolina will have their work cut out for them as unaffiliated voters now make up over one-third of all active, inactive and temporary registered voters in the state.
The NC State Board of Elections’ voter registration statistics report confirms that unaffiliated voters now make up a majority of registered voters in NC, accounting for 2.5 million of the state’s 7.2 million registered voters. Unaffiliated voters also make up the majority of Jackson County’s voting population, accounting for 11,572 out of 29,024 voters.
The increase in unaffiliated voters does not come as a surprise and, in fact, has actually been expected, WCU director of the Public Policy Institute Dr. Chris Cooper said.
“It has been creeping up since 1996 when the Democrats opened their primaries up to Unaffiliated voters,” Cooper said. “And the Republicans had done the same in 1988. Most commentators had predicted this would occur sometime in 2022.”
According to the website, Law Insider, unaffiliated voters are defined as registered voters who are not registered party members of any major political parties.
“Most of it is generational replacement,” Cooper said. “New voters aren’t affiliating and older voters are exiting the electorate. The trend among young people is also consistent with young people’s general disposition against institutions.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that political parties had the right to decide whether their primaries, according to a paper co-authored by Cooper, could be open to voters other than those registered with the party, which is part of the cause for the rise in unaffiliated voters in North Carolina. By 1996, both major parties had opened their primaries to unaffiliated voters and they remain open today. Which is a contributing factor to the projected continued rise of the unaffiliated voter block.
“All signs suggest an increasing rise as new people enter the electorate,” Cooper said. “The only way to arrest the rise would be for political parties to limit who could vote in their primary.”
While some argue that unaffiliated voters still tend to lean towards one party over the other, it has also been found that they tend to be representative of the state’s overall trends.
“For the most part, unaffiliated voters reflect larger trends in the state,” Cooper said. “swinging slightly right when the state leans right, and left when the state leans left.”
As it appears unlikely that the major parties will close off their primaries anytime soon as both view unaffiliated voters as a voting block that is up for grabs, meaning that for the foreseeable future at least, candidates wishing to win the election will have to not only appeal to the voters within their party but the majority of those outside of it as well.
“Unaffiliated voters are the plurality of voters in the mountain counties, and statewide,” Cooper said. “Any candidate who wants to win must appeal to this growing and critical group of voters.”
- By Kaylee Cook