“North Carolina’s reliable for me,” Trump said at Dorton Arena in Raleigh, the first of four stops on Election Day Eve. “Never lost. And I don’t think we’re going to start now.”

The Trump campaign emphasized early voting across the country. In North Carolina, in-person early voting started in all 100 counties on Oct. 17 and ended on Nov. 2 at 3 p.m.

The State Board of Elections reported that more than 4.2 million residents cast early voting ballots—a record number.

The previous high for early voting happened in 2020, when more than 3.6 million ballots were cast.

Including absentee voting, 4,465,548 voters—or 57 percent of the state’s 7.8 million registered voters—cast ballots in the general election as of Nov. 3, according to the state board.

Official turnout could be even higher because of a lag between when ballots are turned in and when data is uploaded.

Lorena Castillo-Ritz, chair of the Mecklenburg County GOP in a region anchored by left-leaning Charlotte, said that the Trump campaign, conservative PACs, and her organization embarked on a “strong ground game” that targeted “low-propensity voters” who are registered to vote but did not cast their ballot in 2020.

“When we get people to vote who didn’t vote in the last election, that adds up and makes a significant impact in the overall numbers statewide,” Castillo-Ritz told The Epoch Times.

“We’re hopeful that getting the low-propensity voters to the polls in our area, and other urban areas across North Carolina, elevates President Trump to a win here.”

First in Line

Tony Caraccio is a 21-year-old HVAC professional in Asheboro. He was first in line at the Election Day eve rally in Raleigh, arriving at midnight for Trump’s scheduled 10 a.m. address. He believes that early voting numbers will benefit Trump when the ballots are counted.

“There was a widespread grassroots movement for early voting that we haven’t seen in the last few cycles. The campaign learned from its mistakes and focused on getting absentee ballots and early voting so that the election is too big to rig,” he said.

“I was too young to vote in 2020 and thought I’d never have a chance to vote for Trump. I wish the circumstances didn’t lead to him not winning then and running now, but at least I had the chance to vote for him this time.”

Turnout in the 25 western North Carolina counties impacted by Hurricane Helene was 58.9 percent—around 2 percent higher than the statewide total, the state board said.

Over the weekend, at a rally in Kinston, Trump praised the people who voted early in areas where homes and businesses were swept away by mudslides and flooding from Helene.

“Many of these people don’t even have a house anymore. The devastation is like something never seen. It’s largely areas where people like Trump that were affected, and even with all of that devastation, they turned out in record numbers early,” Trump said.

“The people of your state, the people of North Carolina, are amazing. I thought we would get 50 percent of the number that voted in 2020. [Instead] they broke the record,” he added.

Holding 16 Electoral College votes, North Carolina is a battleground state that both candidates covet.

Barack Obama became the first Democrat presidential candidate to win North Carolina in 30 years when he defeated John McCain in 2008. Trump prevailed in 2016 and then edged Biden by 1.3 percent of the vote in 2020.

Roy Cooper, who has served as governor since 2017, is a Democrat. He spoke in Raleigh before Harris took the stage as did attorney general Josh Stein, who is running for governor against Republican nominee Mark Robinson.

On Election Day eve, Trump held a 1.3 percent lead over Harris in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.

The western portion of the state was severely impacted by flooding and mudslides from Hurricane Helene, displacing many residents. The mountains of western North Carolina are considered a Republican stronghold.

The 25 counties that compose the disaster area have 1.3 million registered voters. In 2020, Trump won 604,119 votes to Joe Biden’s 356,902 votes in those counties, according to political analyst Ray Bonifay, who highlighted the importance of the region in an Oct. 18 commentary on RealClearPolitics.

Amid the surge of Republican early voters, the Harris campaign canceled $2 million in ad reservations in North Carolina media markets on Oct. 29, according to AdImpact. The previous day, the campaign reserved $2.7 million for an ad blitz.

The Carolina Journal reported that Harris was not abandoning the state but that she was shifting her focus to the Raleigh-Durham market.

In Charlotte on Nov. 2, Harris courted conservatives who are reluctant to support the former president.

“We know we have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who has been trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” Harris said.

Harris said that she will “represent all Americans, including those who don’t vote for me” and that “the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Trump, she said, is focused on revenge and personal interests while she will put country over party.

“Donald Trump will walk in with an enemies list” if he is elected, Harris added.

“When I am elected, I will walk in with a to-do list, full of priorities I will get done for you the American people,” she said.

Voting Habits

Nathaniel Scripa moved to North Carolina from Syracuse, New York to live in a state that was more conservative, he told The Epoch Times.

“Now a lot of people from New York and other blue states are moving here and bringing with them their voting habits, which doesn’t make sense because the liberal policies that made their states so terrible are what led many of them here,” he said.

“That makes early voting, and getting people who usually don’t vote to get to the polls, important in this election,” he added.

Harris held rallies centered around the “When We Vote, We Win” motto. Trump believes that, in North Carolina and nationwide, the increase in Republican early voting combined with a traditional strong showing at the polls on Election Day will result in his victory.

“It’s ours to lose,” Trump said in Raleigh. “If we get everybody out and vote, there’s not a thing they can do.”

You can tell it was a smashing success because the propaganda press hasn’t stopped talking about it.  Any honest journalist would tell you that it was an electrifying political rally that united Americans of all backgrounds and from all walks of life.  Because today’s “reporters” do not tell the truth and instead push an ideological agenda at all times, they are following Hillary Clinton’s marching orders and smearing the MSG event as some kind of twenty-first century Nazi hatefest.

Their lies prove only how panicked they are at the sight of President Trump’s broad appeal.  Democrats talk endlessly about skin color and ethnicity and celebrate physical “diversity” as if it were a noble virtue.  They are obsessed with how a person looks to the exclusion of everything in a person’s mind and soul that makes each of us unique.  That said, Democrats could never have packed Madison Square Garden with such a diverse group of Americans united in common cause as Trump did — at least not without busing in paid actors to meet their rigid racial quotas.

When the Trump campaign made tickets available to the public, they were gone almost immediately.  Who grabbed them?  Oh, just about every kind of American you could imagine.  Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, agnostics, and non-believers.  Black, white, brown, and every shade in between.  Blue-collar workers and billionaires, tradesmen and suits, young and old people alike.  Every kind of dirty job, white-collar profession, and socio-economic rung was well represented.  Lifelong Republicans, libertarians, independents, and former Democrats all sang patriotic tunes together.  Truly, President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally demonstrated in striking fashion just how attractive his policies are to Americans of every demographic.

It was an astonishing scene, and if any campaign event were to demonstrate the magnitude of the political realignment (if not ideological revolution) that Donald Trump has unleashed in America, MSG’s joy-fest was it.  It should take its place in the history books as prima facie evidence that the “Great Awakening” is here.  The Democrats’ and corporate media’s outrageously malicious attempts to paint the political rally as “dark,” “threatening,” and even “fascist” should similarly be regarded as demonstrable proof of their moral turpitude, deceitfulness, and irrelevancy.

I don’t usually write about physical diversity.  Appearances, like book covers, tell us next to nothing about the stories inside.  I have been fortunate enough to interact with all kinds of human beings — good and bad — and get a decent sense of both the great things our species can accomplish and the horrifying deeds we are all too willing to commit.  We humans have no trouble uniting to save strangers in mortal danger, but we also have no trouble killing each other for our beliefs.  What a world it would be if we worked as hard to avoid murdering each other as we do to rescue a child trapped in a well.  Alas, that’s not who we are, and no race of people on the planet has a monopoly on either vice or virtue.

I suppose that’s why the Madison Square Garden rally stood out.  Because of their ideological compulsion to separate the electorate into distinct groups of “oppressors” and “victims,” Democrats of every generation demonize some group for special targeting.  A century ago, Democrat President Woodrow Wilson wanted to use the “science” of eugenics to eliminate black Americans.  Today, Democrat leaders speak of “white supremacy” as a disease that must be similarly eliminated.  Who knows which group of people displaying some combination of physical attributes the Democrat Party will choose to vilify next.

In contrast, President Trump’s MSG event showed just how much his message is directed not to any one class of people but rather to all people regardless of how they might look, speak, and act.  It doesn’t matter what color your skin is; anyone can be an ardent defender of free speech against government and corporate censorship.  It doesn’t matter how you pray (or even if you pray); anyone can be a resolute protector of religious freedom against government persecution.  It doesn’t matter whether your ancestors came over on the Mayflower, or whether your parents worked hard to gain their American citizenship; a promise to defend the U.S. Constitution from its enemies holds the same weight.  None of us was around when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and made clear to the whole world that the purpose of government is to safeguard every person’s God-given rights and liberties.  No matter how we look, how old we are, or what part of America we call home, all of us are capable of fighting for and preserving freedom.  Regardless of the stories we hold inside, we can choose to stand together and against government tyranny.

Give me a country filled with people as physically diverse yet wholly unified in their loyalty to the Bill of Rights as those who showed up at President Trump’s MSG rally, and I’ll show you an America that will lead the world for centuries to come.  I’ll show you a country capable of building new and exciting things.  I’ll show you a country reenergized and focused and ready to defend its way of life.  I’ll show you a country whose demise is greatly exaggerated and whose greatness is just beginning.  I’ll show you a country that is “awakening” from an odd slumber and slowly but surely coming back to life.

That’s not supposed to happen.  Democrats were all suckled on some version of Marx’s historical materialism in which human society marches forward inexorably toward communism.  They call themselves, “progressives,” because they erroneously believe history proceeds in only one direction.  Those of us who resist their planned dystopia are “reactionaries,” “deniers,” “deplorables,” and “conservatives” stuck in the past and unable to bend.  That’s why Democrats are obsessed with berating us that we must join “the right side of history.”  So sure are they of the future that they arrogantly believe anyone who refuses to join their sad, hate-filled, envy-ridden descent into collectivist totalitarianism is destined to be either forgotten or reviled in the pages of history.

They are wrong.  Marxism is intellectual tripe.  Collectivism denies humans the opportunity to flourish as individuals.  Totalitarianism is as ugly today as it was last century.  And a growing movement of freedom-minded Americans is rising once again to preserve liberty in its hour of need.

It used to infuriate me that Republican backstabbers such as Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would disparage President Trump’s governing philosophy as appealing only to an insular, white, working-class fringe.  The man won far more votes than McCain or Romney, won over ten million additional votes in his 2020 campaign, won the highest percentage of minority votes of any Republican in over sixty years, and is expanding that historic support in his 2024 campaign today.  How could anybody credibly argue that Donald Trump has done anything but strengthen the Republican Party?

Then I finally realized that no matter how “conservative” RINOs claim to be, they have either consciously or unconsciously bought into the Democrats’ Marxist philosophy.  They have deluded themselves into believing that the world is destined to be dark, uninspiring, and unfree.  President Trump disagrees, and a hundred million Americans have joined him to fight for a future that cherishes human liberty.  That’s how we really make history.

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

As of Sunday afternoon, data provided by the University of Florida’s Election Lab shows 41.2 million voted by mail or early in person in the vast majority of states, with only a few states not reporting data.

Compared with four years ago, Republicans are returning more mail-in ballots and voting early in-person. Party affiliation does not mean that voters cast ballot for their party’s nominated candidate, meaning there is no way to definitively know what presidential candidate is ahead.

In states that report votes by party, registered Democrats have a 3.8 percent lead over registered Republicans, with 40 percent to 36.2 percent, respectively. Independent or minor party voters make up about 23.8 percent of the remainder, according to data provided by the lab.

Republicans have a 9-point advantage over Democrats during in-person early voting, while Democrats have a more than 11-point lead over Republicans for mail-in ballot returns, the data show.

As of Oct. 25, only 24.5 percent of mail-in ballots returned were from Republicans, while about 52.3 percent of Democrats did so, according to the Election Lab. Some 22.6 percent of returned mail ballots were from independents or those registered with minor parties.

Republicans in 2020 also had a smaller lead voting in-person early, the data show. At the time, some 40.2 percent of Republicans voted in-person early, while 37.5 percent were Democrats.

States that have reported no data so far include New York, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.

Swing-State Breakdown

In Nevada, Republicans have a 5.1 percent early voting lead—or 31,000 votes—over Democrats, the Election Lab’s data show. That state was called for President Joe Biden over Trump in 2020.

Meanwhile, Republicans have a 6.9-percent advantage over Democrats in Arizona, a state that only reports mail-in ballots. Biden was also certified the victor in Arizona by a slim, 10,000-vote margin four years ago.

Voting by mail is extremely popular in Arizona, with nearly 90 percent of voters having cast their ballots early, most by mail, in 2020. Election officials in Arizona can begin processing and tabulating mail ballots upon receipt, but results cannot be released until one hour after polls close.

Late last week, Republicans pulled ahead in North Carolina, a state won by former President Donald Trump in 2020. By Sunday, the lead increased marginally to about 1.1 percent, or about 30,000 votes, over Democrats, data show.

Earlier this month, Trump visited areas in North Carolina that were ravaged by Hurricane Helene, saying that some Americans in the region “felt helpless and abandoned and left behind by their government.”

“In North Carolina’s hour of desperation, the American people answered the call much more so than your federal government,” he said.

And in mid-October, Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, and told a crowd that she wants to “fight for the ideals of our country and to fight to realize the promise of America.”

Pennsylvania has only reported mail-in ballots as of Oct. 27, showing that Democrats have taken a more than 330,000-vote lead over Republicans. However, Democrats’ lead has narrowed in recent days, down about 19,000 votes since Oct. 24, data show.

Pennsylvania did not have a clear winner in 2020 for four days after Election Day, as officials sifted through a huge backlog of mail ballots. The state is among only a handful that do not permit election workers to process or tabulate mail ballots until 7 a.m. ET on Election Day, which means it will likely again take days before the outcome is known.

Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin do not report party affiliation via the Election Lab website.

Reuters contributed to this report.