Obama Banks: Clues From The Early Vote

First, click through the data here and here.

Gallup and Pew data show that Democrats are leading in the early vote. The equally reliable Annenberg National Election Survey's data shows that, across the country, Democrats are tied with Republicans in the early vote. Obviously, early voting matters by state only, but these datums are worth noting because Republicans have historically held an early vote advantage nationwide. (Note: Republicans tend to get their folks to fill out absentee ballots and return them early; Dems are investing disproportionately in getting people to leave their homes and vote early, so Democratic numbers will increase as the election approaches.)

In battleground states, Obama is "leading" in Florida (2.5 million people; Democrats have a +6 advantage on ballots turned in) up slightly in Colorado (note that the early vote is already approaching 50% of the 2004 total), leading in Nevada, overperforming in North Carolina (where Dems have historically had a good program) and a few points behind in Georgia. (35.5% of the early voters there are black.)

A note about Colorado: an internal Republican spreadsheet suggests that Democrats have returned 34.6% of their ballots as of Tuesday and Republicans have returned 32.9% of their ballots for about a 15,000 vote advantage. In 2004, at about this time, Republicans had n advantage and won the early vote by about eight points. 1.6 million people requested mail-in ballots -- that's triple the 2004 number -- and Obama has a two to one advantage with low turnout voters who've already turned in their ballots.

Also: 237,143 unaffiated voters have voted. The key: who they voted for. Obviously.


Something to keep track of -- and something we really have no data for -- is the percentage of sporadic voters who're turning out early. That is.. the percentage of unreliable or non-habitually voting Democrats, Republicans and independents who've already cast a ballot.  The GOP won't disclose their estimates; the Obama campaign believes that at least 20 percent of the Democratic early vote nationally are comprised of non-habitual Democratic voters. In some states, like Nevada, the number is around 40%.
Is there a way to project national turnout increases from early vote increases?  In Nevada, according to Jon Ralston, about 50,000 more people have voted already compared to four years ago. Not easy to say: Nevada wasn't terribly competitive in 2004, so the EV numbers for '04 were artificially low. And, as GWU's Michael McDonald points out, it won't be clear until election day whether the early vote share has increased relative to overall turnout.

A point about the data: one Las Vegas newspaper noted that fewer young people and Hispanics were turning out early in Nevada than would be expected if Obama's demographic profile was mapping exactly to the early vote. A sign that the early vote is not trending in Obama's direction?  Not really. Hispanics in Nevada have no history of voting early; neither do young voters; the Obama campaign's early vote efforts are focused on other slices of the electorate there.  And the overall numbers point to a massive surge of sporadic Democratic voters.