Unaffiliated voters have recently become the majority in North Carolina, surpassing registered Democrats and Republicans.
Of the more than 7.2 million registered voters, almost 2.5 million are unaffiliated, meaning they now account for roughly 34.5% of all North Carolina voters. There are about 2.4 million registered Democrats and 2.2 million registered Republicans.
This uptick in unaffiliated voters could be due to several reasons. Newly registered voters could be abstaining from choosing a party affiliation, previously registered voters could be choosing to shed their partisan affiliation in favor of being independent, or voters could be doing this, so they can pick which primary to vote in.
In 1988, North Carolina saw an uptick in the number of people registered as unaffiliated; this coincides with the Republican Party opening its primary to unaffiliated voters. There was a similar uptick in 1996 when the Democratic Party did the same.
