I know this site has the potential to become a hand-wringing melodrama as some of the poll numbers tighten. Let's keep some things in perspective.
First, I would like to share my observations on the race as it stands.
1. We are currently ahead. This is a good thing.
2. Early voting, in my view, seems to throw off pollsters. We saw this A LOT in the primary. When early voting happens at the level that it is currently happening, pollsters have a really hard time determining what percentage of likely voters are left. There was massive early voting in the North Carolina primary, Barack was way, way ahead with those figures and even though all the pollsters projected a tight race on election day, he won the North Carolina primary by 56 to 42%.
3. We are leading the early voting. Rasmussen says we're winning the early voting by 9 points, Gallup says by 10 points, Pew says by 19 points, and Zogby says by 20 points. Average them all and you get 14.5 points.
4. The state by state polls matter much more than the national figures. For all we know, the tightening in the race could reflect what's going on in Oklahoma and Wyoming, not Virginia and Colorado.
Secondly, here are some state by state polls from the much-maligned GFK pollster that I just found today(totals may not add up to 100 due to rounding):
COLORADO
Obama 50 McCain 41 Other 4 DK/Refused 5
FLORIDA
Obama 45 McCain 43 Other 3 DK/Refused 8
NEVADA
Obama 52 McCain 40 Other 4 DK/Refused 5
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Obama 55 McCain 37 Other 4 DK/Refused 5
NORTH CAROLINA
Obama 48 McCain 46 Other 3 DK/Refused 3
PENNSYLVANIA
Obama 52 McCain 40 Other 5 DK/Refused 4
VIRGINIA
Obama 49 McCain 42 Other 7 DK/Refused 4
Obama is leading in every state. And what's more, he is leading outside the margin of error in every state except for Florida and North Carolina.
Thirdly, let's talk early voting. We will start with the polling and then move on to the actual specific vote counts in each state.
Let's start with North Carolina. After just a couple days of early voting, Survey USA stated that Obama was leading the early voting there 59% to 36%. Their early voting numbers during the primary were actually quite far off so let's look at Public Policy Polling. They say Obama leads the early voting and astounding 63% to 36%. That was a couple days ago, and the Democratic quotient among early voters has gone down a tad. But Obama still leads the early voting huge according to the NC polls and that's awesome.
Colorado early voting polls. Rasmussen says he leads 57 to 42%. And that's with ballots being cast equally by Democrats and Republicans. That's huge. I am anxiously awaiting the Survey USA and Public Policy polls which should be coming out soon.
Florida. Zogby says Obama leads 60 to 40% among early voters. Again, that is enormous. In my view, that's a bit generous, but the point is he has a nice lead.
Georgia. The latest Survey USA poll shows Obama leading the early voting 52 to 46%. Frankly I would be surprised if the lead is that small with over 35% of early voters being African American. But still, he leads the early voting in Georgia.
Virginia. Granted, early voting has not been going on very long. Nevertheless, from the small sample of early voters that Survey USA has, Obama leads by a whopping margin of 67 to 30%.
Ohio. This one to me is highly significant. Two weeks ago, Survey USA showed Obama leading the early voting 57 to 39%. As of yesterday, Survey USA showed Obama leading the early voting 56 to 39%, almost exactly the same margin.
Now let's talk some specific early voting numbers. First, I want to address Ohio. I have a new nickname for Ohio: "the invisible ground war." I call it the invisible ground war because it is very clear to me that there has been a massive effort by either the Democratic Party, the Obama campaign, or both, to have people mail in their ballots this year. Maybe they were afraid of the caging lists and voter intimidation. I'm not really sure, but what I can say is that a whopping 143,941 residents of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) have already mailed back their ballots and another 30,951 have voted in person. And the number of ballots being cast increases sharply day by day. By my estimate, over 400,000 residents of Cuyahoga County will have already voted before November 4th. 673,777 votes were cast for President in Cuyahoga County in 2004, so I think it's fair to say that the early voting is truly massive there this year.
Of those that have already cast ballots in Cuyahoga County, about 58% are listed as Democrat, 13% Republican, and 29% Other. LINK
Statewide figures for Ohio are not able to be found unfortunately, but of the handful of counties available on the early voting website, the tally is 454,020. To be frank, this is probably only about one third of the statewide ballots so far - it does not include Youngstown, Akron, Canton, Toledo, Cincinatti, and a ton of the rural counties. So if we extrapolate by multiplying by three, the figure is 1,362,060. Given the fact that early voting is accelerating, this figure will easily crush the 2 million mark by the morning of election day.
Now let's look at North Carolina. Turnout for North Carolina has been absolutely off the charts, particularly among African Americans and Democrats. Out of the 1.62 million votes that have been cast, 27.6% are by African Americans, 54% by Democrats, 28.3% by Republicans, and 17.7% by Independents. I am actually using the figures I got directly from the North Carolina Board of Elections website, so my numbers do not jive with the Early Voting site's numbers.
Regarding yesterday's numbers, it is true that the overall percentage of Democrats declined a little, but the percentage of Republicans declined a little as well. The quotient of Independents went up, which is a good sign. Also, the youth quotient has shot up from 9% at the very beginning of early voting to 12.3% and it is increasing daily. If we figure that Obama is getting between 80-85% of Democrats (probably more since the early voting Democrats are the most enthusiastic), 10% of Republicans and over 50% of Independents, Obama is probably leading the early voting by well over 200,000 votes.
The early voting total from 2004 was 1,094,154. When all is said and done, by my estimate, over 2.3 million people will have early voted this year in North Carolina.
Georgia put it another crushing day of voter turnout yesterday. About 180,000 people voted statewide, bringing the total to 1,387,145. The early voting total for 2004 was about 670,000. By election day, I figure 2.4 million people might have already voted. The African American quotient went down just a tiny bit yesterday, from 35.4% to 35.23%. That is still exceptional.
Florida, to put it mildly, is going to blow the door off the early voting figures from 2004. At some point either today or tomorrow, the figure will easily surpass the early voting total of 2,758,185 from 2004. With Governor Crist's extended hours, it should easily reach 3.5 million and may even surpass 4 million, which would be astonishing.
Another major thing I want to mention is that the 15,000,000 cumulative figure on the early voting site is just a partial figure. They have either incomplete or missing figures entirely for Wisconsin, Washington, Ohio, Texas, Indiana, Illinois, Nevada, West Virginia, Vermont, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, South Carolina, Virginia, Arizona and a host of other states. And many times, the numbers that you do see do not include mail-in ballots. So when someone acts like Chicken Little, throws up their hands, and says, "Oh noes! Early voting is too light!," gently remind them that over 31 states are doing early voting, not too mention that all 50 states do mail-in absentees and that the real figure of early voters so far is probably between 20 and 30 million people.
That having been said, we cannot afford to rest on our laurels at all. If you live in a swing state, please donate any time you have between now and election day to get the vote out. Personally, I will be in Nevada Sunday through Tuesday doing whatever I can to help out. Get outside your comfort zone! Fight to the end!