Something else is happening in North Carolina’s 2024 elections: Republicans are eagerly showing up to vote early.
About 4 million people — more than half of those registered in the state — voted early in North Carolina, according to data from the State Board of Elections. And Republicans defeated both unaffiliated and Democratic voters heading into the final day of early voting, which was not the case in either 2016 or 2020, according to the John Locke Foundation’s Vote Tracker.
Additionally, former President Donald Trump’s campaign is embracing early voting. At his Saturday rally in Gastonia, many attendees said they had already voted early.
Jason Little is a Statesville resident and volunteer for Trump Force 47, a network supporting the former president’s 2024 campaign. The organization has made a big push this year to get people voting early.
On Saturday, Little volunteered at the rally wearing a Trump Force 47 T-shirt and a white baseball cap that read “Trump Force Captain,” with a Trump signature on the brim.
“You’re taking too much risk by waiting until the day when, you know, anything can happen. You could end up in a wreck. Your kid could have appendicitis or something, and you’ve lost your greatest right to vote as a citizen,” Little said. “That’s been our goal to make it too big to cause any problems. And that has been the message of the entire campaign all along: vote early.”
As he spoke, the big screens behind Little’s head said, “Make a plan to vote! Mail/Away/Early Personal.”
But he is not fully in favor of early voting.
“You know, we’re not happy with how long early voting is taking,” Little said. “We believe it doesn’t have to take that long, because then there are opportunities to make things happen.”
In a video ahead of the rally, Trump also warned voters to “flood the polls” to prevent Democrats from “cheating,” repeating debunked claims that Joe Biden did not legally win the 2020 election.
“These people will cheat, and they do,” he said. “We must prevent what happened in 2020 from ever happening again.”
Some other voters shared Little’s concerns.
“I’m a little old-fashioned,” said Laura Schnabel, who came from Lake Wylie, South Carolina, to attend her first Trump rally. “Let’s just have Election Day on one day, and this way there won’t be any fakes.”
Schnabel said she and her husband voted by mail this year, a method the Trump campaign tried to limit in 2020, because they had recently moved from New York and would have had difficulty registering in South Carolina in time for the election. to register.
“I don’t like doing that, but we had to do it,” she said.
When it came to Trump’s speech, he stuck to familiar talking points: immigration, the economy and an inadequate federal government response to Hurricane Helene.
Immigration
Trump promised to reduce illegal immigration, claiming that undocumented migrants are causing crime to rise in the United States.
“I will stop the invasion of huge numbers of criminals who have entered our country,” he said, claiming that “thousands” of “murderers, rapists and convicted criminals” are illegally crossing the country’s southern border.
There is no evidence that countries are emptying prisons and mental health facilities and sending people to the United States, as Trump has claimed.
Nationally, crime fell by 49% from 1993 to 2022, and again by 3% from 2022 to 2023 — murders fell by 11% that year alone — according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data. However, Trump falsely claimed on Saturday that many major cities do not report their crime data to the FBI and were left out of the report.
But most major US cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, reported their 2023 crime data to the FBI.
According to the website verificationthis.com, rumors originally arose online that major cities were not reporting their crime data after the FBI changed its requirements in 2021. Some law enforcement agencies, including those in major cities, have not reported their 2021 crime data because they could not comply with new FBI guidelines. But in 2022, the FBI made it easier for more agencies to participate. More than 85% of the country’s law enforcement agencies – covering more than 94% of the US population – crime data submitted in 2023.
Western North Carolina and FEMA
Trump claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency has failed to provide sufficient aid to Western North Carolina.
“You have been through a lot and your government has not helped you much,” he said. Adding 50% of calls from Western North Carolina to federal agencies in Helene’s aftermath went unanswered.
Federal call data reported by Politico shows the government has struggled with its disaster response, but officials say this is due to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton hitting the country’s coast in quick succession.
FEMA now has 21 disaster recovery centers in 39 North Carolina counties, covering a total of 1.7 million households.
Jobs
Trump also cited a report Friday that job creation slowed sharply last month, with just 12,000 new U.S. jobs in October, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“One of the worst jobs reports of all time,” Trump said. “These are depression numbers, I hate to tell you.”
The report fell well short of the approximately 100,000 new jobs that economists had expected, making it the worst since late 2020. However, the unemployment rate remained stable at 4.1%.
Economists are praising the slowdown in strikes, including the nearly 44,000 workers who participated in the Boeing strike, and the impact of Hurricane Helene.
