By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
and BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
Staff Writers
When it comes to party affiliation, growing numbers of North Carolinians are saying, “No, thanks.”
A county-by-county analysis of Tarheel voters points to dramatic shifts in the past decade that will likely influence campaign strategy for elections this year, according to the nonpartisan Democracy North Carolina.
The watchdog group tracks voting issues and advocates for a more-inclusive election process, according to its Web site.
The group’s numbers, culled from county-level registration records, indicate significant changes in voter rolls in Beaufort County.
Here, unaffiliated registration grew faster than any other form from 2000 to early 2010.
Beaufort County’s unaffiliated population has expanded by 3,381 voters since 2000, a 146-percent increase, reads a Democracy North Carolina report released late last month.
During the same 10-year period, county Republicans gained 2,401 voters, a 34-percent change.
County Democrats shed 1,060 voters, a 6-percent loss, the report reads.
The county had 31,280 registered voters as of Jan. 29.
Whatever the changes over the long haul, registration has remained fairly steady in the past year, reported Kellie Harris Hopkins, Beaufort County’s elections director.
Asked if her office is fielding substantial inquiries from voters interested in switching allegiances, Hopkins said, “We’re getting a few folks in.”
Statewide, unaffiliated numbers advanced by 627,547, showing 83-percent growth from 2000 through the first month of 2010. During the same decade, Democratic ranks expanded by 11 percent, while Republicans extended their party by 16 percent across the Old North State.
Troubled waters?
These sea changes in registration have unsettled some key figures in the two major parties.
The state Democratic and Republican parties allow unaffiliated registrants to vote in their primaries.
Late last year, the North Carolina Republican Party briefly considered closing its primaries to unaffiliated voters.
A limited faction within the GOP contended the primaries should be closed partly because conservative candidates were being shunted aside by outsiders bent on making mischief in the nominations.
The state GOP backed away from the proposal to close its primaries for fear that it might alienate voters who could be useful to them in the general election.
But some political observers argue that it’s easy to overstate the influence of unaffiliated voters, who, after all, don’t vote as a bloc.
“We’re not counting anybody out,” said Alice Mills Sadler, chairwoman of the Beaufort County Democratic Party.
Sadler said she was unaffiliated years ago, before latching on to the principles espoused in the Democratic Party platform.
“There are people, for lack of a better term, who are open-minded, and they’re thinking politically,” she said, speaking of the unaffiliated.
Local party stalwarts differed as to why their organizations are falling behind in the numbers game. Also varied were opinions on what effects unaffiliated voters could have on the coming elections.
“My guess is it’s probably the same it is a lot of places,” said Ann Cherry, speaking as an individual Democrat.
(Cherry is secretary of the Beaufort County Democratic Party, but isn’t authorized to speak for the party.)
Cherry said she had read that in some states unaffiliated voters actually outnumber Democrats and Republicans.
(A report to that effect has appeared on CNN.com.)
Sometimes unaffiliated voters say they want the option of participating in either of the parties’ primaries, Cherry related.
“I think our main thing is not to worry about who is registered Democratic but who votes Democratic,” she said.
In January, Charles Hickman, second vice chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party, offered his executive committee a report on voter-registration changes.
Last week, Hickman said he had been following the changes since March 2009.
Though the Democrats still lead in overall registration, and Republicans are gaining ground in the county, unaffiliated voters appear to be outpacing the rest, he pointed out.
“They are the most consistent (in Beaufort County), even though they’re the smallest group,” Hickman said.
Meaning
A surge of unaffiliated voters “means the political parties must scramble to win elections with a smaller share of reliably loyal voters on their side,” said Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina. “Stereotypes of the Republican rural conservative and the straight-ticket, African-American Democrat are giving way to a more complex profile of the North Carolina electorate.”
While the registration rolls of Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina have grown by 11 percent and 16 percent, respectively, since 2000, the number of voters choosing not to affiliate with any party soared. The 627,500 new unaffiliated voters in North Carolina are more than half of the 1,162,000 voters added during the decade, according to Hall.
Unaffiliated voters now make up nearly one-fourth of the 6.1 million registered voters in the state, compared to about one in seven voters in the state in 2000.
In addition to unaffiliated voters, the state’s urban voters likely will play an increasingly important role in statewide elections, according to Democracy North Carolina. The seven most-populous counties in the state — Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Cumberland, Durham and Buncombe counties — now have 37 percent of all the state’s registered voters. In 2008, those seven counties gave Barack Obama, Kay Hagan and Beverly Perdue a lead of more than 300,000 votes each, enough to overcome the rest of the state’s majority support for their Republican opponents.
The next 13 counties in population have 22 percent of the state’s voters — giving 20 North Carolina counties 60 percent of the state’s voters.