Remember, Obama’s entire margin of victory came from Ohio early voting in 2008. John McCain got more votes on election day than Barack Obama:
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177 Comments
I strongly believe Nate Silver will nail all of his predictions. The right wing bubble on Ohio will pop into an ugly mess.
i wish we could bet on this here. Dispatch has Obama up 15% in early voting and Romney winning 11% on election day.
I say obama wins early voting by 18% when you include souls to the polls today.
dispatch has a question for “will you go to the polls before election day”. So “souls to the polls” is already accounted for. They have 600,000 people going to the polls and returning absentee ballots this weekend and monday. Let me guess “Cuyahoga county is really strong right now, so that s/b 700,000.”.
I ran a simulation using the Dispatch’s number.
Early Voting, 2012
Total: 2,713,675 (47% of the Electorate)
Obama (56.6%): 1,535,941
Romney (41.74%):1,132,688
Other (1.76%): 47,761
Election Day, 2012
Total: 3,060,102 (53% of the Electorate)
Obama (44%): 1,346,444
Romney (55%): 1,683,056
Other (1%): 30,601
Total, 2012
Total: 5,773,777
Obama (D): 2,882,385 (49.9%)
Romney (R): 2,815,744 (48.76%)
Other: 78,362 (1.34%)
Frankly, I can’t see early voting being 47% of the electorate. I just can’t. However, I will adjust it down to 40%, as some people claim it to be.
—
Early Voting, 2012
Total: 2,309,511 (40% of the Electorate)
Obama (56.6%): 1,307,183
Romney (41.74%): 963,989
Other (1.76%): 40,647
Election Day, 2012
Total: 3,464,266 (60% of the Electorate)
Obama (44%): 1,524,277
Romney (55%): 1,905,346
Other (1%): 34,643
Total, 2012
Total: 5,773,777
Romney (R): 2,869,335 (49.7%)
Obama (D): 2,831,460 (49.04%)
Other: 75,290 (1.26%)
The clip cut him off before he got done speaking but in general in Ohio you have several things going on:
1. Ohio has a lot fewer days of early voting this time around compared to four years ago, they started it later, and had it at fewer places, shorter hours etc. In general of coures the more early voting hours (actually times where you can go to a polling station live and vote as you would on election day) the less early voting you will have.
2. Democrats are more likely to vote early at live early voting than Republicans generally speaking while Republicans are more likely to vote early via absentee ballot and mail relatively speaking. So fewer early voting days does not impact their count as much.
All of this suggests perhaps just that more Democratic leaning voters will now shift to actually voting on election day as opposed to suggesting that such voters are not going to vote at all this time around.
3. The heaviest early voting takes place the closest to election day this was true four years ago as well. Ohio still has early voting going on, Sunday, November 4: 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Monday, November 5: 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Also the numbers quoted in that link are only accurate through I believe October 30th. The state has yet to release early voting numbers since then which is most of this past week. So much if not all of that alleged gap will shrink or go away as well by the time early voting is 100% done since the heaviest early voting days are towards the end.
Finally, so far almost as many people as of the October 30 date had voted early as did four years ago, this means that once its all said and done early voting overall in Ohio should be significantly higher than it was four years ago which usually bodes well for Democrats in general etc.
http://elections.gmu.edu/early_vote_2012.html – Early voting information for all 50 states
lol what is the purpose of that site? All it does is link you to the huffington post
sorry, I fail at the internet. It’s actually pretty extensive data, thanks.
Keep in mind, even there is less time to early vote, Republican early voting is up by 108,000 votes ( roughly 21% increase from 2008).
Democrats are lazy and need to be bribed on Election Day. I don’t see this changing on Tuesday.
By way of response:
1. With regard to 1., it directly contradicts your last sentence, which is accurate: early voting this year will be marginally higher.
2. With regard to 2., “more Democratic leaning voters will now shift to actually voting on election day as opposed to suggesting that such voters are not going to vote at all this time around” – this ignores history. The reason Republican legislatures fight tooth and nail to restrict early voting and Democratic judges constantly expand it is that Democrats do not say “hey, I didn’t get around to voting during the several weeks of early voting, I guess I’ll just go on election day.” They just don’t go, period; Republicans do. Axelrod understood in 2008 and understands now that if they don’t build a big lead early, they are finished.
3. With regard to 3.: “Also the numbers quoted in that link are only accurate through I believe October 30th. The state has yet to release early voting numbers since then which is most of this past week. So much if not all of that alleged gap will shrink or go away as well by the time early voting is 100% done since the heaviest early voting days are towards the end.”
This is wishful thinking. The numbers cover 29 days of early voting and Republicans shrunk the relative gap for 27 of the last 28 days. It doesn’t matter if lots of Dems show up late, they have to increase their turnout relative to Repubs and they have failed to do this over a long period. Even Axelrod didn’t try to claim this.
The situation in the Midwest perfectly illustrates polling’s two greatest weaknesses: 1) a willful refusal by pollsters to acknowledge late momentum; and 2) an inability or unwillingness by pollsters to adjust for the new phenomenon of mass early voting .
Newt Gingrich went from 15 behind to 12 ahead in South Carolina in 4 days riding a wave of momentum and none of the polls caught it – they were all off by a huge amount. With regard to late momentum in the Midwest, the Pittsburgh Tribune just polled Romney even in Penn. with 6% undecided and his rally was bigger than any Obama rally this year (in the freezing cold). Obama can get neither separation nor above 50% in 20 Ohio polls and he drew 2800 people to a rally in an Ohio metropolitan area of 1.3M, the same day Romney drew 35,000. A credible polling firm just found Romney leading in Michigan and that is not out of line with five other recent polls there. Polls have also found Romney ahead in both Wisconsin and Iowa and a top Obama surrogate indicated Wisconsin early voting is not going well. While the polls are all over the map, the clear trend is Romney with the strong late momentum.
In addition, the early voting polling is just a joke, even by right leaning pollsters that people on this site tend to favor. Simple math establishes that massive numbers of both Repubs and Democrats are claiming they voted early when they didn’t. Polls show 30 point gaps between the two parties when ballots returned by the two parties at the SOS office are two points apart. For some polls to be accurate, Obama would have to be leading by 70 points among early voting independents – not happening. This is also partly why so many polls are D+9 in states that are likely to be D+2 on election day.
Despite all the problems with the polls, Romney obviously has the momentum late in states where the incumbent can’t break 50% and didn’t build much of an early voting lead. This should be decisive.
Great job, I agree with you….Romney will win if we show up and take someone else to vote.
I need to fire that man
You need to pack your stuff, and call Condi and Colin and tell them they’re going with you to Hawaii.
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[...] win without fighting a powerful concept; math. Even Obama’s chief spinster, David Axelrod, struggled to respond to the solid early voting numbers coming out of Ohio, which show Republican early voting [...]