An October Surprise from Voters?

Will Breazeale is convinced a pre-emptive strike with a 747 could make or break his congressional election. Breazeale, a three-tour Iraq war veteran and Republican candidate from North Carolina’s 7th district, plans to use his skills as a pilot to fly himself to Wilmington and Fayetteville for final campaign stops just as voting opens. But Breazeale won’t be making this trek on Election Day; it will be on October 16, the day North Carolina begins early voting.
The Tar Heel state isn’t the only one to institute early voting programs. Thirty-five states allow some form of early voting, a number that has grown steadily since the early 1980s. Forty percent of California’s presidential primary ballots were cast in early voting and new estimates project 1 in 3 voters nationwide will vote early.
Paul Gronke, a political science professor at Reed College and director of the school’s Early Voting Information Center, studies the effects of early voting on overall election turnout. While results vary by state and district, Gronke said trends show early voting is especially popular in the West, where commutes to the polls are long and citizens have a less sentimental attachment to Election Day. “In areas like Boston and Virginia, Election Day is like a big civic event,” Gronke says. “But in these newer [and western] cities, Election Day is a hassle.”
On a national level, Gronke estimates early voters comprise 2 to 5 percent of the overall results. That number is not only likely to rise as more states perfect the early voting process, but become ever more important as elections are won by shrinking margins. This is the trend that Breazeale is counting on to give him an edge on his incumbent rival. “We have a higher voting percentage in North Carolina because of early voting,” Breazeale said, “and generally the more people that cast votes, the more it favors a challenger-me.”