Speaking to Republicans during a Trump rally in Greenville, North Carolina, on Monday, October 21, US Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) exposed the massive data news showing that Republicans in his state have managed to match Democrats in early voting turnout and vote by mail. That news is something that could indicate a similar amount of enthusiasm and turnout for Republicans and Democrats.
Rep. Bishop, as background, is attempting to become the first Republican, elected attorney general in North Carolina in over a century, something that could represent and lead to, if he is elected, a massive change in terms of how the state is run and how strong the state-level GOP is.
Describing to the crowd why he is attempting to move from Congress to the North Carolina Attorney General position, Rep. Bishop said that he wants to defeat his Democrat challenger and “replace woke lawfare with common sense, to restore law and order and to back the men and women of law enforcement.”
During the speech itself, Rep. Bishop noted that, compared to the 2020 election, Republican voters have shown up in much higher numbers to both vote early and via mail-in ballots. As of when he spoke, the data shows that around 342,000 registered Republicans voted in such a manner, about 33% of all votes so far recorded.
Meanwhile, unlike 2020, registered Democrats have only a slight advantage, accounting for just 35% of the votes. By contrast, in 2020, at this point in the election, registered Democrats accounted for a whopping 46% of all ballots cast via either early voting or mail-in ballots.
Commenting on that news, Rep. Bishop said, “So here’s the news, and it’s really good since early voting began in North Carolina last Thursday through the first four days, the number of ballots cast by Republicans is almost even with ballots cast by Democrats. That, my friends, is unprecedented to compared at the same time in the 2020 election.”
He continued, “For every Republican ballot, Democrats had cast more than two, and that was not a COVID-driven phenomenon. In 2016 also, the Democrat vote was more than twice as heavy as Republican vote after the first four days of early voting. So by this point, in 2016, Democrats had a more than 100,000 advantage in votes already cast.”
Building on that same point and noting that there is still more reason for optimism, he said, “In 2020, Democrats’ advantage was more than 325,000 votes. But this year, the Democrats advantage to date is barely more than 22,000 and Republicans should still beat the Democrats on election day, as we usually do.” The crowd roared with applause as he shared the potentially very good news.
Watch Rep. Bishop here:
Rep. Bishop also said, commenting on what the voting news means about Republicans in the state, said, “It means that you and other Trump voters have laid the groundwork, have built the foundation for complete victory on election day. You have you have begun the process of beating the Democrats at their own game.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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