More: Democrats are seeing far better turnout than they did at this point in the 2022 midterms, which went terribly for their party in North Carolina. But they're also doing better compared to the 2018 midterms, which ended up being a blue wave nationally. G. Elliott Morris, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, noted in his newsletter that Democrats haven't held this much of an advantage at this point in early voting since at least 2006.

Zachary Donnini, head of data science at the election data and analytics site VoteHub, said that the start of early voting has shown positive signs for Democrats nationwide, but most of all in North Carolina.

"I've been telling other people that it doesn't look like it's going great for Republicans right now, but it's not as bad as North Carolina," Donnini said Tuesday. "This is the strongest data for Democrats right now in the entire country."

Of course, there's a big caveat: we don't know for sure who these people are voting for, and we don't know what the final electorate will look like. Republicans are expected to narrow the gap throughout the rest of early voting and on Election Day. The outcome also will depend on unaffiliated voters, who have also shown an increase in turnout and make up a third of all voters so far. Polling suggests that unaffiliated voters as a whole are breaking for Democrats right now, but the split may be different among those who actually show up.