Voters are going to the polls this morning for North Carolina's most significant primary in at least 20 years. The polls open at 6:30 a.m., with a ballot featuring races for governor, U.S. Senate, statewide executive office and seats in the Legislature, on county commissions and on the judicial bench.
Barack Obama and rival Hillary Rodham Clinton wrapped up two weeks of intense campaigning with stops in North Carolina on Monday. With 115 delegates to award. it's the biggest prize left on the party's primary election calendar.
Also on the trail today were the candidates seeking to replace Gov. Mike Easley, who will leave office next year after two terms in Raleigh.
The primary is history making almost entirely to the Democratic presidential contest, which is meaningful in North Carolina for the first time since 1988. More than 493,000 people have cast votes by mail or during the state's 2½-week early voting period.
Early voters in North Carolina are clearly favoring a Democratic ballot this year as they vote in the state's historic presidential primary election. State Board of Elections director Gary Bartlett says more than 85 percent of unaffiliated early voters chose to vote on the Democratic ticket. As of Monday morning, more than 323,000 of all voters had chosen a Democratic ballot while just 72,000 voted on the GOP side. The total number of early voters is approaching 500,000. That's more than half of the total number of voters who cast a ballot during the 2004 primary.
Bartlett said this year's primary has long felt like a general election, and the numbers are starting to reflect that sentiment.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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