We’re seven days in to early voting for this election cycle and nearly 600,000 votes have been cast across North Carolina. Seven days in to the general election in 2010, only around 252,000 votes had been cast across the state.

Turnout in all four Triangle counties has been huge. With two days left of early voting, the number of votes cast in Wake, Durham, Orange and Chatham Counties exceeds the cumulative number of votes cast up to and including the seventh day of early voting in 2010, by two- or or three-fold. Of course for this election cycle, the number of days we have to vote early has been cut from 17 down to 10; voters seem to have taken notice of this shortened allotted time

Here are the total numbers of early votes by County, tallied from the first day of early voting (last Thursday) through yesterday, Wednesday, October 29. We compared them to turnout in the first seven days of early voting in 2010 (note we didn’t use 2012, since it was a Presidential election year).

Source: Carolina Transparency, Vote Tracker (Civitas)

Jane Porter is Wake County editor of the INDY, covering Raleigh and other communities across Wake County. She first joined the staff in 2013 and is a former INDY intern, staff writer, and editor-in-chief, first joining the staff in 2013.

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