CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Blacks are already surging to the polls in parts of the South, according to initial figures from states that encourage early voting – a striking though still preliminary sign of how strongly they will turn out nationwide for Barack Obama in his campaign to become the first African-American president.

There have been predictions all year of a record black turnout for Obama. The first actual figures suggest that wasn’t just talk:

– In North Carolina, blacks make up 31 percent of early voters so far, even though they’re just 21 percent of the population and made up only 19 percent of state’s overall 2004 vote.

– Roughly 36 percent of the early voters are black in Georgia, outpacing their 30 percent proportion of the state’s population and their 25 percent share of the 2004 vote.

No one but the voters can be sure how they voted. And John McCain’s campaign officials note that the Obama camp has put much more effort than they have into early voting. But the numbers are still notable.

Democrats are outvoting the GOP by a margin of 2.5-to-1 in North Carolina, where early voting has been under way for a week. That’s roughly double the margin from 2004.

More than 210,000 blacks who are registered as Democrats have cast early ballots in the Tar Heel State î compared with roughly 174,000 registered Republicans overall. Four years ago, the number of GOP early and absentee voters was more than double that of black Democrats.

“It’s a sign about how energized African-Americans are about this election,” says David Bositis, who tracks black voting trends at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

In Louisiana, more than 31 percent of the early voters are black, and Democrats are topping Republicans nearly 2-to-1. In the crucial battleground state of Florida, nearly 55 percent of early voters are registered Democrats – well above their 41 percent share of the electorate in the Sunshine State.

Virginia, another Southern state that usually votes Republican – but where Obama is doing well in opinion polls – does not track voter registrations by race or party. But some of the largest increases in registrations this year were in Democratic-leaning cities with large minority populations.

Absentee voting – as the name suggests – was originally designed for people who couldn’t make it to the polls on Election Day. But this year, more than 30 states allow any registered voter to cast an early ballot, and many election officials are encouraging voters to do so to ease the strain on Nov. 4. About a third of voters nationwide are expected to cast their ballots before Election Day

Obama’s campaign has focused heavily on turning out those voters, using advertising and campaign events. That’s the message the Illinois senator brought to North Carolina during his last stop, when he addressed a predominantly black crowd in Fayetteville.

“We want to get as many votes in as possible as early as possible,” he said.

Louise Boyd, a 61-year-old Charlotte retiree, voted early this year and then returned to wait in line two days later with her sister, Nyata Frazier. Boyd, who is black, said she expected a very large turnout from watching rallies and noting the historic nature of voting for a black presidential candidate.

“I had a little more pride,” she said. “It shows how vastly the U.S. has changed.”

The surge in black voters follows a similar trend this year in voter registration. In the five states that track voter registration by race, blacks signed up to vote at twice the rate of whites in the six months through September.

The question then was would those newly registered voters turn out to vote, and now there are signs that they will. In Georgia, 230,000 more people have cast early ballots than voted absentee in 2004.

Many of those early voters have come from metro Atlanta counties, including heavily Democratic Fulton and DeKalb.