5. Absentee partisanship makes no sense

Another way we can check if the absentee votes in Bladen County make any sense is to look at the party registration of those who voted. Professor Michael Bitzer of Catawba College did this.

In Bladen, 42% were registered Democrats, 39% were registered unaffiliated and 19% were registered Republicans. It would seem unlikely that such a Democratic leaning electorate would favor Harris by a 24-point margin. Still, we would expect some difference between the party registration edge Democrats had and the vote margins.

It seems unlikely that the disparity would be as great as this, however. In no other county in the district was the difference between the margin in party registration among absentee voters and the margin in the House race greater than 24 points. In Bladen County, it was 47 points. A 47-point difference is possible. You just would think that at least one of the other counties in the district would have had something close to this difference. None did.