(The Center Square) – North Carolina’s population has more than doubled the last 20 years, its voter registration rolls swelling by more than 2.4 million along with it, yet Republicans and Democrats have just marginal gains.

Those signing up unaffiliated, on the other hand, are now the largest voting bloc.

Quite a journey from trailing Democrats 47.6%-17.7% in share midway of the Bush administration.

Two experts of state politics and campaigns agree there’s more to the story than sheer numbers.

And strategies in the next 140 days should be chess rather than checkers.

“In some research I’ve conducted with Michael Bitzer, Whitney Ross Manzo and Susan Roberts, we found that unaffiliated voters are best understood as ‘unmoored voters,’” Chris Cooper, a political science and public affairs professor at Western Carolina University, told The Center Square on Wednesday.

“They tend to stay near their partisan docks, but, with nothing tying them there, a large change in political weather may send them in unpredictable directions.”

Reliability in turnout is also in play with the group.

“The rise of unaffiliated voters makes the political landscape a little less predictable for campaigns,” Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity, told The Center Square on Wednesday.

“It forces them to rely on other data, such as which primaries unaffiliated voters vote in or what media they consume, to predict which party they are more likely to support. It forces campaigns to spend more effort and money on their get-out-the-vote operations.”

Jackson, like Cooper, said unaffiliated voters “behave like weak partisans.”

He estimates 10% as truly independent, meaning evenly dividing support of parties.

In 20 years, since Jan. 1, 2004, the state’s population has increased 26.7%. 

Through Saturday, the voter registrations had changed significantly as well – the more than 5 million then split 47.6% Democrats, 34.4% Republicans and 17.7% unaffiliated, to now more than 7.4 million split 37.2% unaffiliated, 31.9% Democrats and 30% Republicans.

In volume number, while the state’s population more than doubled in 20 years to better than 10.8 million, Democrats have just 11,854 more registrations – and 220,040 less than the day Joe Biden was elected president.

Republicans are up more than 525,000 over the two decades, and are down 25,573 since Nov. 7, 2020.

The voters choosing unaffiliated, meanwhile, have grown from fewer than 900,000 to more than 2.8 million.

During the Biden administration, the number has risen 353,566.

The bloc grew 387,096 in the four years between elections won and lost by former President Donald Trump.

As the Trump v. Biden rematch nears, that just shy of three-quarters of a million, 6.8% of the total population, and 1 in 10 of all registered voters.

Jackson notes 2020 turnout was 69.8% of unaffiliated, 81.6% of Republicans and 75.1% of Democrats.

Trump, as every Republican presidential candidate has for 60 years except Gerald Ford in 1976 and John McCain in 2008, won North Carolina in 2016 and 2020.

Consensus of polling just over four months away, including after his felony conviction, puts him at about a 5% lead.

Republicans also have three-fifths majorities in each chamber of the General Assembly.

But the governor’s office has had just three Republicans since 1900.

Polling indicates Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein are in a dead heat as the summer temps begin to bake.

Jackson said part of the reason for lower turnout by unaffiliated voters “is that they tend to be younger than partisans, and younger people vote less often. So, campaigns that plan to win by courting unaffiliated voters have their work cut out for them.”

And that means, Cooper adds, “The battle over unaffiliated voters is therefore, the key to victory in North Carolina, not because they are universally persuadable, but because small nudges in mobilization may be the key to victory.”