Joel Burgess

Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times

ASHEVILLE, N.C.— Polls and early voting numbers show an edge for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, a battleground state that could shut the door on Republican rival Donald Trump's White House hopes.

But Clinton's advantage is tenuous, and it has happened thus far without big help from African-Americans, a group that has played a significant role for Democrats.

Now, with the opening of 145 more early voting sites Thursday and Friday, analysts are saying that African-American voting numbers might start to resemble those of past elections — even without the marquee persona of Obama.

The big time for change might be this weekend. Four years ago on Saturday, black North Carolinians made up 30 percent of early voters on that one day, despite being just 22 percent of the population.

"That’s why I say Saturday is huge for Democrats and black voters," said Mike Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in Salisbury nationally known for his slicing and dicing of North Carolina election demographics.

African-Americans vote Democratic 95 percent of the time and are "the most reliable core" of that party's coalition, Bitzer said.

The jump-in early voting site numbers vary in each of the state's 100 counties. Some cases are dramatic. In the third biggest county, Guilford, the board of elections voted to go with one polling site for the first week of early voting. Thursday, county election workers blew that up by two dozen, for a total of 25 sites.

"I wasn't going to mess with that," said Benny Sloan, an African-American resident living on the southeastern edge of the county's largest city, Greensboro, who said he saw lines going out the door and wrapping around the building when there was a single site.

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Sloan, 44, manages disadvantaged business enterprises for the Department of Transportation in Raleigh and spends two hours a day commuting. He said he and his wife, Sonja, plan to vote Saturday at one of the expanded sites and thought others might too have been waiting.

"I think that is kind of the consensus. Why are you going to to it today and wait three hours when you may go later and wait 30 minutes? Time is valuable to me."

Sloan said he planned to vote for Clinton.

What does early voting tell us?

North Carolina has voted for Republican presidents twice in 40 years. Obama's win in 2008 was by the narrowest of margins, less than half a percent.

In the next election, Romney pulled the state back into the GOP category, winning by 2 percent. On Friday, an analysis of five recent polls by Real Clear Politics shows Clinton up by 3 percent.

Early voting trends also look positive for the Democrat. Sort of.

Registered Democrats participating in early voting have consistently outpaced Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

But in the first week the total number of early voters in North Carolina has been less than during the same time in 2012. The percentages of Democrats and Republicans have also been lower than four years ago with unaffiliated voters the only group to gain ground.

Chris Cooper, a political scientist with Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, said the electorate may feel discouraged when it comes to their choices.

"It could be a meaningful decline in turnout based on disinterest," Cooper said.

In 2012, Romney was behind in early voting before surging ahead on election day.

Unaffiliated voters present a big unknown, though analysts believe they trend Democratic since a large number are from urban areas.

The other big difference is African-American participation. Four years ago at this time, black voters had cast 28 percent of the ballots, according to Bitzer. But this year African-Americans make up 22 percent of votes cast, "a significant drop," the Catawba College political scientist said.

Clinton’s strategy is to try to replicate, as much as she can, "the Obama coalition" in North Carolina, he said.

"If she doesn’t have a decent showing by black voters, then it makes it that much harder to make the state flip to blue."

The decline in African-American participation is likely due to the fewer number of polling sites for the first week of early voting, which happened because of a 2013 Republican state law decreasing ballot access that was later overturned in court. The lack of the racially historic candidate of Obama also is certainly playing a role, observers say.

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Participation now growing

The first day of expanded sites Thursday was followed by an uptick in participation that put early voting above where it was in 2012, though African-American votes were still lower that four years ago.

Jamal Fox, a black Greensboro city councilman who was tapped by the Clinton campaign to help boost voting, gave a positive spin.

"People tend to vote on issues," Fox said, and those issues hadn't been enunciated in a strong enough manner.

He also pointed to the haphazardness of early voting due to the 2013 law that cut early voting sites and was later overturned by a federal court that said the GOP legislation had intentionally and unlawfully sought to suppress black votes.

He said the weekend could be a pivot point where things turn around.

"African-American churches usually vote as a congregation, after church. So you’ll have more people coming out," he said. "Sunday should be a big."