NC PRIMARY WATCH: 89,000 new voters in North Carolina -- who are they? (corrected)

CORRECTION: We had an Excel problem which botched our figures on party registration. We correctly reported that 46% of new North Carolina voter registrations since January were Democrats. However, only 17% of the new registrations were Republican. The remaining 37% were Unaffiliated.

This is the first in a series of Facing South posts covering the upcoming North Carolina primary elections, which will be held May 6.

Like other states, North Carolina has witnessed a surge in voter registrations this election year. Nearly 89,000 new voters have registered to vote in the last three months, according to new statistics released last Friday.

Who are these new voters, who will be deciding the now-critical North Carolina primaries on May 6?

One surprise: the majority are Republicans. Even without a competitive primary, the North Carolina GOP is registering voters faster than Democrats. 54% of N.C.'s newly registered voters since January are Republicans. See above correction. Our GOP and Unaffiliated columns got merged; the correct figures are as follows: 46% of new voter registrations Democrat; 37% Unaffiliated; 17% Republican.

As for Democrats, here's a very important statistic: 63% of the growth in N.C. Democratic voter registrations since January has been due to new African-American voters. Black voters make up 45% of registered Democrats in the state, and 20% of the overall N.C. electorate.

A final interesting tidbit: the demographic groups that have added the most voters since January are those identifying as "Hispanic" (10% increase) and "Other" (4%). Those two groups still represent a relatively small share of the state's voters -- 134,000 state-wide, or just over 2% of North Carolina voters. But in a close primary, that could make a difference.