<-Cassiodorus' Web NCSBE->

Analysis Plan

This analysis will concentrate on the registration and voting of young people in North Carolina. I will characterize and quantify their conversion (voting in the following general election) and retention (voting in subsequent general elections) rates. These young people will be compared according to whether or not they registered in the course of identifiable registration drives, and also compared with older persons. I will treat this in two segments, the early registration of high school age people that began in 2019 and was expressed on 2020-01-03 and 2019-12-09 as a large bolus of registrations, and voter registration drives of brief duration, directed at younger potential voters. My intent is to assess the effectiveness of these voter registration drives compared to the conventional practice of registering people on an ongoing, undifferentiated basis. My analysis is carried out using R rmarkdown, thereby generating reports directly and reproducibly from NCSBE data. This report uses NCSBE ncvoter and ncvhis files datestamped December 26, 2020. North Carolina demographic data and analyses can be conveniently found at the Office of the State Demographer.

NCSBE Data

The North Carolina State Board of Elections makes publicly available detailed data on voter registration and voter history. This data can be found at https://dl.ncsbe.gov/?prefix=data/. This data is updated weekly, but the old files disappear. The voter history file, ncvhis, accumulates data extending backward about a decade. The voter registration file, ncvoter, updates voter status and, while it retains voters for some time after they become inactive, presents time-dependent data. In addition, there are cumulative “snapshots” (in the snapshot folder of the repository) that contain about a decade of voter registration data. I have combined ncvoter and snapshot data to produce reasonably comprehensive voter registration information, although there are some aspects of the snapshot files that I find difficult to understand. A helpful discussion and instantiation of open source voter registration analysis for North Carolina data can be found at https://github.com/NCVotes/voters-ingestor. The “ingestor” uses PostgreSQL (also know as Postgres), while my work stays within the R statistical analysis system.

NCSBE assigns voters to one of five categories: Active, Inactive (have not voted in the past two general elections and are candidates for being removed), Removed, Denied, and Temporary (applicable to military and overseas - this applies to a very small number of persons). Voter registration laws require that each voter have one and only one voter registration record. The NCSBE data includes a unique person identifier (ncid), county of residence, date of registration, age on last day of year of registration, race, gender, political party, and various other voting-related data. Political party includes those that are qualified according to North Carolina law, and presently include Constitution, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Republican, and also Unassigned (i.e., unaffiliated/independent). In North Carolina, voters can participate in primary elections for their party affiliation, or in the primary of a specific if they are previously unaffiliated. For the most part, I will concentrate on voters who identify themselves as Democrat, Republican, and Unassigned, who constitute about 99% of the registrants.

Voting of Registrants

There is an expected diminution of participation over time due to people leaving the state, as well as those dying or in other ways no longer able to participate in the electoral process. The death rate for 15 to 24 year olds across the United States was a little over 70 per 100,000 in 2018 (that is, pre-COVID) according to the CDC. Generously rounded up this is only 1 per 1,000. This is so low that it should not be expected to noticeably influence the voter participation analysis shown below.

The Census Bureau provides estimates of state outward migration as part of the American Community Survey reports. The 2014 to 2018 estimates for North Carolina here suggest 243,883 persons of all ages move out of NC each year. Looking at 18-year olds. This might amount to some 4,100 persons lost to followup, which again is sufficiently small to be ignored in this analysis.

Registration is carried out as described by NCSBE here. Deadlines are described here. The analysis carried out in this series of reports will show that early voting plays a large role in understanding voting rates. NCSBE describes early voting here. This process is described by NCSBE as:

The early voting period begins and ends before Election Day. (For the 2020 general election, early voting occurred October 15–31 in North Carolina.) Any registered voter or eligible individual in North Carolina may cast an absentee ballot in person during this time. This period is sometimes called “one-stop early voting.” Individuals who are not registered to vote in a county may register at early voting sites during the early voting period. After registering, the newly registered voter can immediately vote at that same site. This process is called “same-day registration.”

The NCSBE voter registration files show that there was a remarkably high number of registrations dated 2020-01-03. This is due to legislation to accomodate North Carolina's preregistration for young people who are 16 or 17 years old. According to the NCSBE, “To register to vote in North Carolina, eligible voters must be at least 18 years old, but 16- and 17-year-olds may preregister to vote. This means that once you become eligible by age to vote, your voter registration application will then be processed. Until you are registered, you will not be eligible to vote.”. The 2019 ncvoter data shows that there were high numbers of registrations for 17 year olds for 2019-12-09. I have not been able to determine the reason for this, but I will assume it is associated with early registration and include those young people along with those registered on 2020-01-03 in my analysis. Any of these 17 year old registrants who were 18 years old at the time of the 2020 general election would qualify to become active voters.

Percentage Voting for January 2016 Through October 2020 Registrants

The voting rate in the 2020 presidential election is shown for each registration year. For instance, the “2016” columns show the rate of voting in 2020 of persons registered in 2016. For 2020, the registration dates are arranged into three non-overlapping intervals. “2020Prereg” is for pre-registration, specifically on 2020-01-03 or 2019-12-09. “OneStop2020” is for one-stop registration and voting, October 15-31, 2020. “2020” is for January 1 through October 14, and does not include registrants for early or October registration.

I have identified 10 counties that contain colleges or universities, BUNCOMBE, DURHAM, FORSYTH, GUILFORD, JACKSON, MECKLENBURG, ORANGE, UNION, WAKE, WATAUGA. As a group, these counties have particularly high voting rates for young people, which I explore at some length in other reports. I point out that this category includes Mecklenburg and Wake, the two most populous counties in North Carolina. Between them, they account for the preponderance of the college county registration and voting counts.

Comparative barplots

Eighteen-year olds taken as a whole generally vote at a lower rate than the general population. However, 18-year olds in the college counties are distinguished by a five percent higher conversion rate than in the other counties, and sometimes exceed the general population rate. A naive binomial 95% confidence interval is about +/- 1% for this data. Detailed data is in Appendix A of this report. If the college county young people had voted at the lower rate of their peers, roughly 1,500 voters would have been lost.

Appendix A. Counts and Percentages for January 2016 Through October 2020 Registrants

In these tables, the voting rate in the 2020 presidential election is shown for each registration year. For 2020, the registration dates are arranged into three non-overlapping intervals. “2020Prereg” is for pre-registration, specifically on 2020-01-03 or 2019-12-09. “OneStop2020” is for one-stop registration and voting, October 15-31, 2020. “2020” is for January 1 through October 14, and does not include registrants for early or October registration.

Summaries

Summary of Registrations
age_group 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2020Prereg OneStop2020 2020Total
<=18 17,302 86,499 80,777 74,006 57,731 30,097 54,625 5,104 89,826
>18 117,420 664,023 227,345 435,749 401,249 680,835 3,106 128,578 812,519
(all) 134,722 750,522 308,122 509,755 458,980 710,932 57,731 133,682 902,345
Statewide Voting Participation in the 2020 Election, All Ages
variable 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2020Prereg OneStop2020
pct.Lost 41.9 40.4 34.8 33 19.7 30.1 11.4
pct.Voted 58.1 59.6 65.2 67 80.3 69.9 88.6
College Counties Voting Participation of 18 Years Old or Younger in the 2020 Election
variable 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2020Prereg OneStop2020
pct.Lost 47.2 37.1 39.2 34.8 25.1 26.2 8.5
pct.Voted 52.8 62.9 60.8 65.2 74.9 73.8 91.5
Statewide Voting Participation of 18 Years Old or Younger in the 2020 Election
variable 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2020Prereg OneStop2020
pct.Lost 48.4 42 43.4 39.9 29.2 30.2 12
pct.Voted 51.6 58 56.6 60.1 70.8 69.8 88
Other Than College Counties Voting Participation of 18 Years Old or Younger in the 2020 Election
variable 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2020Prereg OneStop2020
pct.Lost 49.5 45.3 46.8 44.2 32.4 33.8 15.3
pct.Voted 50.5 54.7 53.2 55.8 67.6 66.2 84.7

Detailed Data

Statewide Voting Participation in the 2020 Presidential Election, All Ages
election_date registr_yr Regular Voted.Reg pct.Voted.Reg Prereg Voted.Prereg pct.Voted.Prereg OneStop2020 Voted.OneStop2020 pct.Voted.OneStop2020
2020-11-03 2016 750522 435715 58 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2017 308122 183734 60 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2018 509755 332547 65 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2019 458980 307487 67 4795 3273 68 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2020 710932 570963 80 52936 37057 70 133682 118493 89
College Counties Voting Participation of 18 Years Old or Younger in the 2020 Presidential Election
election_date registr_yr Regular Voted.Reg pct.Voted.Reg Prereg Voted.Prereg pct.Voted.Prereg OneStop2020 Voted.OneStop2020 pct.Voted.OneStop2020
2020-11-03 2016 42051 22199 53 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2017 32649 20548 63 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2018 32969 20058 61 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2019 26198 17087 65 363 279 77 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2020 13321 9972 75 25283 18645 74 2522 2307 91
Statewide Voting Participation of 18 Years Old or Younger in the 2020 Presidential Election
election_date registr_yr Regular Voted.Reg pct.Voted.Reg Prereg Voted.Prereg pct.Voted.Prereg OneStop2020 Voted.OneStop2020 pct.Voted.OneStop2020
2020-11-03 2016 86499 44641 52 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2017 80777 46866 58 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2018 74006 41879 57 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2019 57731 34672 60 3385 2268 67 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2020 30097 21307 71 51240 35849 70 5104 4493 88
Other Than College Counties Voting Participation of 18 Years Old or Younger in the 2020 Presidential Election
election_date registr_yr Regular Voted.Reg pct.Voted.Reg Prereg Voted.Prereg pct.Voted.Prereg OneStop2020 Voted.OneStop2020 pct.Voted.OneStop2020
2020-11-03 2016 44448 22442 50 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2017 48128 26318 55 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2018 41037 21821 53 0 0 NA 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2019 31533 17585 56 3022 1989 66 0 0 NA
2020-11-03 2020 16776 11335 68 25957 17204 66 2582 2186 85


This report was run on 2021-01-20.