Who Is Winning The Early Vote? http://dlvr.it/2NL4fG
Who Is Winning The Early Vote?
ABC News
OHIO:
Voters do not register by party in Ohio, so it's not as clear cut which party has the edge. That means that Republicans and Democrats have tried to spin the Ohio early vote to their advantage.
The Obama campaign released a memo Thursday saying that early voting is up from 2008 in counties that Obama won in 2008 compared to counties that McCain won. The Obama campaign pointed to a Time magazine pollthat showed Obama winning early voters over Romney 60-30 percent and argued it could help them boost turnout.
To use a real-time example, in Democrat-leaning Franklin County (which includes Columbus), 125,000 people have voted early, which makes up more than 22 percent of total turnout in 2008.
But Republicans put out their own memo arguing that most voters the Democrats are getting to vote early were already inclined to vote Democrat on November 6. That phenomenon is "cannibalizing" their Election Day support, the memo says, claiming that's hurting Democrats in other states where they have a lead like Nevada and Iowa.
Meanwhile, Republicans claim they are targeting so-called "low-propensity" voters who would help them pad turnout by voting early.
In reality, it's impossible to tell whether early voting is reducing or increasing turnout until after Election Day, McDonald says. The polls show Obama with an extremely narrow lead over Romney there. And many more early votes could be on the way. Over 812,000 total have voted early there so far, while 1.5 million voted early there four years ago.
A few words of warning when judging the early vote: these numbers are a snapshot in time. They change literally every single day. And just because Republicans and Democrats have requested ballots and voted doesn't mean they are necessarily supporting their party's guy at the top of the ticket.
Still, early voting numbers give us the earliest glimpse into who is winning and losing in these crucial battlegrounds.
We will do our best to keep you periodically updated and if you're really a numbers junkie, check out McDonald's United States Elections Project.
NEVADA:
Democrats are performing well in early voting in the Silver State. Overall, Democrats lead Republicans by more than 9 percentage points with the vast majority of votes (81 percent) coming through early in-person voting.
In the state's biggest jurisdiction, Clark County (anchored by Las Vegas), Democrats have built up a huge 20 percentage-point lead via in-person voting. And in Washoe County, a critical battleground that includes Reno, Democrats lead in-person voting by four percentage points.
When factoring in mail ballots, Democrats lead by 30,000 votes out of 180,000 cast in Clark County, according to Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston, who estimates that a quarter of all people there have already cast ballots.
COLORADO:
In-person early voting began on Monday in Colorado, while absentee voting started ten days ago. Republicans have a slight lead of around 5,500 in ballots cast. That amounts to a 1.7 percentage-point lead. In 2008, when Obama won Colorado, he had a 1.8 percentage-point lead in the early vote when the final tally was made.
Republicans claimed in a memo this week they have the advantage, with a lead of 10,000 in overall votes cast plus absentee ballots requested. But it's still too early to tell who might come out on top. In 2008, 1.7 million voters cast their ballot early and as of Wednesday, only 326,000 had done so. And a large portion of Colorado voters are unaffiliated with either party, so it's almost impossible to tell how they voted.
FLORIDA:
Over 1 million people have already voted in Florida via absentee ballot as of Thursday, about 10 percent of the likely overall electorate, the Miami Herald reported.
Republicans have an early advantage. Out of all the ballots cast so far, Republicans have submitted 54,000 more than Democrats, a five percentage point advantage.
