Unaffiliated voters don’t split the same way twice

In North Carolina’s 2024 general election, unaffiliated voters made up 35.6% of everyone who voted. On the same ballot, they appear to have given the Democratic candidate about 47% of the two-party vote for President and about 77% for Governor, which Stein won for the Democrats. That is a gap of about 30 points between two races decided by the same voters on the same day.

What it means

Unaffiliated is not a lean. It is a group that moves with the candidates. In the presidential race the estimate has unaffiliated voters at 45.2% Democratic and 50.6% Republican, a slight Republican tilt. In the governor’s race it has them at 65.7% Democratic and 20.2% Republican.

Surveys show the same direction and a similar size. In the 2024 exit poll, North Carolina independents were 47% Democratic for President and 58% for Governor. In AP VoteCast they were 51% and 64%.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. In Iowa in 2022, the same method puts unaffiliated voters at about 40% Democratic for Senate and about 22% for Governor. Across the races we checked, unaffiliated voters moved by 20 to 30 points between contests on one ballot.

For reading the early vote, this matters. An early electorate that is one-third unaffiliated, as North Carolina’s is this year, cannot be turned into a vote count by assuming independents split evenly, or the way they split last time.

What it doesn’t mean

The numbers are estimates, not measurements. No official record shows how any group voted. We assumed every registered Democrat voted for the Democrat and every registered Republican for the Republican, then attributed the rest of each candidate’s vote to unaffiliated voters.

That assumption overstates how far unaffiliated voters swing. Any registered Republicans who voted for Stein are counted here as unaffiliated Stein voters. In the 2022 Senate race, allowing for 10% of registered Democrats crossing over changes the unaffiliated split from about 42–51 to about 52–46. The real gap between President and Governor is probably smaller than 30 points, though the surveys still put it at 11 to 13 points.

It does not mean unaffiliated voters are Democrats in disguise. In top-of-ticket races in North Carolina and Iowa in 2024, the estimate has them leaning slightly Republican.

How we checked

Turnout by party comes from the North Carolina State Board of Elections voter history file, which records the party each voter was registered with at the time of voting. In 2024, 31.5% of North Carolina voters were registered Democrats, 32.9% Republicans and 35.6% unaffiliated or minor-party.

Vote totals come from the certified 2024 results. For each race, the unaffiliated vote for a candidate is that candidate’s total minus the votes of their own party’s registered voters. Dividing by the number of unaffiliated voters gives the split.

We compared the results with exit poll and AP VoteCast figures for self-described independents. The surveys use self-identification, not registration, so they measure a related but different group.