New Democracy NC report analyzes election by race, gender, age

Today’s Democracy NC analysis of the 2012 election results by gender, race and age has yielded some predictable results, but also some surprises.

The predictable: A majority of voters in Chatham, Durham, Orange and Wake counties chose President Obama over Mitt Romney. The race was close in Chatham County where Obama slipped under the wire by about 1,700 votes; however, the president won decisively in Durham County, by more than 77,000 votes.

The surprise: Wake County went for Obama by about 50,000 votes, but it also had the second-highest Republican voter turnout in the state after Mecklenburg County. Wake County also cast the most ballots statewide (488,599) and saw the third-best turnout among registered voters in the state.

First place for voter turnout goes to Chatham County, where more than three-quarters of registered voters cast ballots, compared to 68.3 percent of the state total. Chatham also had the second-highest turnout of African American voters at 76.6 percent, against a statewide 70.2 percent.

Both Wake and Chatham saw the highest registered voter turnout among women, with 76.3 percent and 76.8 percent respectively, compared with a statewide turnout of 69 percent.

Women voted in greater numbers than men in every county in North Carolina, though in Chatham, white women voted at a slightly lower percentage than white men, 76.8 percent to 76.9 percent.

Overall, black women and Republican men cast ballots at the highest proportions statewide, (74.4 percent and 72.2 percent respectively). Only in Orange County did black women vote at a lower rate (73.4 percent) than the state percentage. In Durham and Orange counties, both traditional Democratic strongholds, Republican men voted below the state percentage, at 67 percent and 66.8 percent.

Wake and Chatham counties saw the highest turnouts for voters over 65 in the state. Overall, seniors voted at higher rates than any other age group. In Durham and Orange however, people ages 18 to 25 cast more ballots than seniors, though seniors outvoted them proportionally.