A reader writes in this morning, looking at the early voting totals in North Carolina:

North Carolina
481,467 total votes cast
138,633 black (29%)
324,398 white (67%)
2004 General Election Black Voter Percentage – 19%
(Early voting started this weekend)

This reader looks at the numbers and concludes, “black voters appear to be voting in greater numbers than they have in prior elections and relative to their composition of the total electorate. These numbers should moderate as we get closer to the election and more and more voters participate, but it does confirm one theory going into election: The Obama campaign is converting incremental interest in the election into hard votes, and it has the resources to continue to do this until November 4. Obama and Hillary are all over Florida this week to turn out early voting. Thus, the question forpundits and pollsters should not be ‘will all of the new voters actually show up.’ The question should be, ‘How bad will it ultimately get for McCain and the Republicans?’”

Eh, I’m not so sure. Let’s go back and look closer at these numbers.

In 2004, blacks were 19 percent of the North Carolina electorate that consisted of 3,501,007 votes. That is 665,191.33 votes — let’s say 665,192 votes.

In other words, 20 percent of the African-American electorate from last time has shown up and voted early. That’s good news for the Obama campaign, but I’m not quite sure we should be shocked that African-Americans are taking advantage of early voting for the first major African-American major party candidate.

In 2004, the African American vote split 85-14, according to exit polls. That comes 565,413 votes for Kerry, 99,779 votes for Bush.

PublicPolicyPolling, a Democratic outfit, puts the split at 92-4 this year. Let’s make it 96-4, and apply that to the current total of African-American early voters. If that split is accurate, Obama has picked up about 133,088 African-American votes so far to 5,545 for McCain, a margin of 127,543.

The first recent poll that I could find a racial breakdown for is Research 2000, which puts their sample at 24 percent black, 69 percent white — a whiter sample than the early voting so far, but not an unreasonable conclusion. They have Obama ahead by 2 percent overall, and they have the black vote splitting 91 percent to 3 percent, and the white vote splitting 27 percent for Obama, 62 percent for McCain.* (Note that leaves 11 percent of the white vote going for some other option.)

If the white vote that has already turned up splits the way Rasmussen 2000 does, then those 324,398 early votes split 201,127 for McCain, and 87,587 for Obama. This gives McCain a margin among early white voters of 119,540.

Obama’s margin among early blacks is 127,543; subtract McCain’s white margin from that and you get an Obama lead of 8,003 votes.

(Again, remember, that under this calculation, 11 percent, or 35,684 white voters are voting for another option – Barr, Nader, etc.)

In other words, that 29 percent black/67 percent white sample, presuming that Obama gets 96 percent of the African-American vote, gets Obama a lead of all of 1.6 percent. Obviously, Obama only needs to win the state by one vote to collect all of its electoral votes, but if, as the reader suggests (reasonably), “These numbers should moderate as we get closer to the election and more and more voters participate,” then if current trends within the different demographics hold, McCain needs the total voter pool on Election Day to be only a little bit whiter than the early voting pool in order to pull ahead. Obama can’t afford to have the total voter pool drop much below the current 29 percent.

The white vote split in 2004 73-27 in favor of Bush (and that was with home stater John Edwards on the ticket!). I would suggest that if McCain loses North Carolina, it will be because of changes in the white vote, not because African-American turnout was so much higher.

Since I began writing this post, the reader noted a couple other polls and how they see the white vote splitting. PublicPolicyPolling puts it at 55-39, although they think the African-American vote won’t surpass 21 percent. Rasmussen also gave Obama 38 percent of the white vote.

Using the PPP model, the early white vote splits 126,515 for Obama and 178,419 for McCain (and much fewer votes for other candidates, 19,964 in this calculation). Obama’s total margin then is 75,439 votes, which would be a 15 percent lead in early voting.