actual participation when it comes to the percentage of the vote by about 3%. not good news for democrats. though the bright spot is the hispanic participation really has blossomed right now and in fact, just the raw numbers alone, we are seeing hispanic participation at more than 336,000 ballots returned in 2016 than 2008. let's go to north carolina. two million people have participated there. who is in the lead right now when it comes to ballots returned? democrats have a 243,000 ballot returned advantage. however, when you look at what happened in 2012, their lead was at 307,000 so not great numbers right there when you do the comparative for democrats. let's go into the racial breakdown. look at the participation rate. african-americans at 22.7% participating in the early vote. hispanics at 1.8%.