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Active-duty military personnel and veterans have a significant presence in North Carolina. North Carolina is home to two major military bases—Fort Bragg (Army) and Camp Lejeune (Marine Corps)—in addition to two Marine Corps Air Stations at New River and Cherry Point and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. As a result, more North Carolina adults are veterans than the national average: 7.9% versus 6.9% nationwide. In 2019, nearly 642,000 veterans lived in North Carolina according to the most recent…
Dr. Michael Cline is the state demographer for North Carolina at the Office of State Budget and Management and has given us permission to re-post his content here. Each year, he publishes population estimates and projections for North Carolina and its counties. Ten years ago the town of Leland, NC had a little more than 13,000 residents. According to our July 1, 2019 populations estimates, there are now more than 22,600 residents. That’s a growth…
As this article from 538 details, the 2020 election in North Carolina was held under newly redrawn maps. Districts for the U.S. House, state Senate, and state House seats were redrawn after a three-judge panel in state court ruled last year that the previous maps were unconstitutional and violated “citizens’ right to fair elections.” The newly redrawn maps still had to have equal populations using data from the 2010 Census, but North Carolina’s population has…
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…
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