Another wild-card in a campaign season full of wild-cards is the increased use of
absentee voting:
Experts estimate that more than 20 percent of voters nationwide will cast their ballots before Election Day by mail or at early-voting locations, a proportion of the electorate that is rising with each election. Some states and counties open the ballots before Election Day and keep the results secret; others count them with regular ballots.
Analysts and party officials who study early voting trends say that a decade ago those who took advantage of absentee ballots tended to be relatively well off and highly educated, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by almost 2-to-1. But as the ease of early voting has spread, the ratio is slipping, and some analysts say that nearly as many Democrats as Republicans now vote early.
In Iowa, at least, where state Democrats have established a strong absentee voting campaign since 2002, the numbers may be an early sign of Democratic motivation:
DES MOINES, Iowa -- The Nov. 7 election is around the corner, and Democrats have requested nearly twice as many absentee ballots as Republicans.
That's an edge Democrats said could be a key to deciding many races. But Republicans said they will have a better Election Day turnout that will offset the early voting numbers.
State officials said almost 137,000 absentee ballots had been sent out. That includes 77,611 to Democrats and 38,192 to Republicans.
About another 21,000 have gone to voters who haven't declared a party preference.
For comparison, the final absentee ballot numbers in 2002 were 116,157 Democratic ballots, 87,344 Republican ballots, and 38,496 with no party preference. In Iowa, voters can vote early in person via absentee ballot until Saturday, November 4th the evening of November 6th, or their absentees must be postmarked before November 7th, so it will be interesting to see how the final absentee numbers play out this year.
Iowa has some of the most voter-friendly absentee laws in the country, and Iowa Democrats are known for being extremely aggressive in their absentee voting campaigns (which is why Republicans have been trying to increase limits on absentee voting there).
As to their base, however, Republicans throughout the country are strongly urging their supporters to vote absentee. As Matthew Spieler wrote on Friday for CQPolitics:
Many states have loosened formerly restrictive requirements for absentee voting. And Republican officials, who have to pull out all the stops in what has turned into an exceedingly difficult election year for their party, are increasingly emphasizing early absentee voting to try to draw a commitment from their conservative voting base.
The GOP effort comes at a time when a number of Republican activists are expressing worry about a lack of enthusiasm among conservative supporters that could sink Republican incumbents in close races around the country.