Do you wonder which voters in your county turned out more than others in the March primary? Did Republican men cast more ballots than Democratic women? Did Black seniors outperform white voters age 65 and older?
How did your county compare with the other 99 – and did a hot race, like a primary contest for sheriff, drive up overall turnout?
Answers to these questions are revealing, although likely not as telling as how your county’s voters behave in a November general election. That’s because participation in primary elections is so low.*
Statewide, fewer than one out of four registered voters cast a ballot in the March 2026 primary compared to nearly three out of four in the November 2024 presidential election.
Even in the expensive Republican primary between Sen. Phil Berger and Sam Page, only one-third of registered Republicans in Rockingham County cast a ballot.
The fact that two-thirds of Republicans stayed quiet and wouldn’t help Phil Berger in his existential crisis tells you he didn’t lose because of outside spending or Democratic mischief or even Sam Page’s popularity. Sen. Berger was straight-up abandoned by Republicans in his own county.
Statewide, data for the primary show that Democrats outperformed Republicans, Black and white voters participated at about the same rate, the number of ballots cast by Hispanics and Asian Americans doubled in four years, and turnout among seniors (35%) was five times the rate for young people (7%) – a much bigger gap than in general elections.
Who turned out in the 2026 primary, and why it mattered
Three of the four counties with the highest turnout of registered voters had a hotly contested Republican primary for sheriff – and Unaffiliated voters casting Republican ballots made the difference in who won. Those same four counties – Mitchell, Hyde, Beaufort and Graham – were also the four counties with highest turnout among white voters and four of the five counties with the highest turnout for Unaffiliated voters.
The relatively high participation of white women and Unaffiliated voters in Beaufort and Hyde contributed to Rep. Keith Kidwell’s defeat.
The two counties with the highest Black voter turnout – Northampton and Bertie – were also the two with the highest turnout for Democrats in eastern NC. The strong turnout of Black women in those two counties helped protect Rep. Rodney Pierce against former Rep. Michael Wray’s challenge and also lift Patricia Smith to a decisive victory over Rep. Shelly Willingham.
The 10 counties with the lowest turnout include many that rank low in general elections. Robeson County ranked #100 in November 2024 and March 2026. Not surprisingly, the list of chronic low performers includes four counties with a significant number of active duty and retired military registered voters – Cumberland, Onslow, Harnett and Hoke.
Two more counties where less than one out of six registered voters cast a ballot were Pitt County, with relatively younger voters and a boring primary ballot, and Mecklenburg County, with several well publicized primary races but a history of hard-to-motivate voters.
Overall, Black seniors age 65 and above were the subgroup most motivated to participate in the March primary. Their turnout of 41% doubled the 20% rate for Republican men and surpassed the 30% rate for white Democratic women.
The 21% turnout rate for all Black voters basically matched the 22% for all white voters. By contrast, in the 2024 presidential election, the 78% white turnout beat the 66% rate for Black voters by 12 percentage points – the biggest gap in decades.
White liberals often bemoan low Black turnout – and, indeed, a 12 percentage point increase in 2024 would have added 185,000 more ballots from Black voters.
Progressives’ biggest problem: white voters, especially men
North Carolina has two million registered white Republicans compared to 920,000 white Democrats. That GOP advantage of over one million white voters is five times bigger than the 185,000 vote gap from the Black vs. white turnout in 2024.
The Supreme Court’s destruction of the Voting Rights Act magnifies the problem. Gutting the VRA undermines the collective voice of Black voters and the leadership of Black lawmakers. It also reinforces the urgency for white progressives to educate more white voters about the benefits of multiracial alliances – for their schools, environment, healthcare, income security, personal freedom, families and society.
Truth be told, President Ronald Reagan signed the VRA renewal in 1982 because Republicans wanted Black Southern Democrats packed into a limited number of districts in order to segregate and pull away white Democrats and achieve a Congressional majority through GOP gains in the South.
In many ways that strategy worked. But the VRA also created a pathway for leaders in the Black community to gain positions of power. Black lawmakers in state houses and in Congress – working together and in coalition with white women Democrats and others – promoted progressives policies on everything from climate change to public safety to tax fairness.
The new, post-VRA strategy echoes earlier white supremacy campaigns that serve only the super-rich; it aims to block the pathway for Black power and disrupt the potential strength of multiracial politics. The numbers in coming elections will show if it succeeds.
Bob Hall and Adrienne Kelly are, respectively, the former and current executive director of the voting rights nonprofit Democracy North Carolina.
*See summary data for mobile view here and the details at this link: worksheets by county and by precinct include data in three sections for multiple demographic subgroups: (1) # registered voters; (2) # ballots cast; (3) turnout rate.
