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E-Cigarette Usage for North Carolina Residents Across the United States, cigarette smoking is now at an all-time low – dropping from 42% of adults in 1965 to 14% in 2017. This is a major victory for public health officials, but challenges remain. Historically, e-cigarettes have been embraced by existing tobacco smokers as a reportedly safer alternative to smoking and eventual cessation device. More recently, however, new users – particularly high school students - have taken…
For the past few months, I’ve wondered: is there a relationship between COVID-19 and absentee ballot requests? Specifically, I hypothesized that absentee ballot requests may increase in communities where COVID-19 rates were higher, perhaps due to increased news coverage and concerns about the virus. Yesterday, I finally dug into the data for North Carolina counties. I looked at the percent of registered voters who had requested an absentee ballot and the cumulative COVID-19 cases and…
Nationally, there are 384 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA), which are defined as an economically integrated set of counties with a core central city with a population of 50,000 or more. They range in size from Carson City, Nevada (55,916) to the New York-Newark-Jersey City MSA (19,216,182) which crosses New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Within North Carolina, there are 15 unique metro regions, ranging from Goldsboro (123,131) to Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia (2,636,883 across NC and SC). With a combined population of 283 million, nearly seven of…
October 27th was the last day for North Carolina voters to request an absentee ballot by mail for the November 3, 2020 election. Early voting ends in North Carolina on Saturday, October 31st. With six days remaining before Election Day, half of North Carolina’s 7.3 million registered voters have already voted: 2.8 million or 38% have voted using one-stop early voting 819,362 or 11% have voted using absentee by mail In this post, we break…
A previous version of this post contained incorrect data for select groups due to a coding error that duplicated a small number of records. We have updated this post to correct for this error and also reflect the most recent data as of October 28, 2020. 5pm ET on October 27th was the deadline for North Carolina voters to request an absentee ballot by mail for the November 3, 2020 election. As of October 28th,…
Yesterday SCOTUS issued an order setting aside a lower court order that extended the 2020 Census through October 31, 2020, allowing the Trump administration to end counting soon. Last night, the Census Bureau issued an operations update stating that Census collection will end on October 15, 2020. Here's what you need to know: When does the Census end? Self-response and field data collection operations for the 2020 Census will conclude on October 15, 2020. Specifically:…
As of Friday, October 9, 2020, you have until October 31, 2020 to complete the 2020 Census. This may change, however, depending up on the outcome of the administration’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. This decision may come as soon as Saturday, October 10. At present, the Census Bureau is reporting that 99.6% of North Carolina households have been enumerated (counted). We’ve gotten a few questions regarding this number and more recent news on…
Nationally, rural counties reported a record number for new COVID-19 infections between September 20-26, according to a recent report from the Daily Yonder. More than half of rural counties nationwide—990—were in the red zone, meaning that they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 residents in a one-week period. [alert type= "info" title = "Defining the 'Red Zone'" body= "According to the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the red zone corresponds to 101 or…
A federal judge ruled that the Census count must be extended to October 31 and cannot end a month early. The order also extends the tallying process by four months, as originally requested by the Bureau in April. While an appeal is expected, as of now, the 2020 Census self-response deadline is October 31, 2020, not September 30. This is good news for North Carolina, because we have significant work to do to ensure a…
Note: As of today, September 22, 2020, the 2020 Census self-response period will officially end on September 30. This end date is still under deliberation, however, and may shift back to October 31, depending upon the outcome of an ongoing legal challenge. We have one more week to count all North Carolina households in the 2020 Census. Here's how North Carolina is doing as of September 21st: North Carolina's response is low compared to other…
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