The first week of early voting was completed yesterday in Florida. While Saturday showed some slight DEM improvements, the DEM share of the early voting is still running almost 7 percentage points below the share of the 2006 vote. Traditionally Democrats have won the early vote battle in Florida.
Absentee voting (vote by mail) by DEMs is also running a couple of points below the 2006 levels. Traditionally Republicans have won the absentee battle in Florida.
While the Republican Party of Florida is crowing about the significant changes in early and absentee levels compared to the 2008 general election levels, I do not believe this offers a fair comparison and that the 2006 off-year election is a better standard to measure what's going on.
Still, Democrats are going to have to turn on the election day GOTV effort if they are going overcome the Republicans advantage in absentee voting and the reversal of the Democrats advantage in early voting.
Charts are show below.