Here are the latest figures out of Iowa.
Here are the latest numbers for absentee ballot requests:
Dems 174,318 (49.07%)
Reps 103,171 (29.04%)
Inds 77,421 (21.80%)
Oth 305 (negligible)
TOTAL 355,215
Here are the new ballot requests since the last report:
Dems +5,716
Reps +8,437
Inds +4,727
These numbers are up sharply from yesterday and the trend of watching Republican ballot requests go down has halted, at least for now.
Here are the latest numbers for total ballots returned:
Dems 89,877 (56.79%)
Reps 39,129 (24.73%)
Inds 29,140 (18.41%)
Oth 115 (negligible)
TOTAL 158,261
Here are the returned ballots since the last report:
Dems +8,233
Reps +7,630
Inds +3,953
It was a huge day for voting yesterday. Roughly 20,000 ballots were received either by mail or via early voting, which is almost double the 11,000 from the previous day. And Democrats were still ahead yesterday, although it seems like Republicans are beginning to gain momentum here.
Just fyi, at the end of the early voting period in Iowa, just prior to the 2008 election, the final percentages of ballots returned looked like this:
Dem 46.9%
Rep 28.9%
Ind 24.2%
Owing to current trends, I don't believe we can replicate this early voting achievement from 2008, but then again Obama won Iowa by nearly ten points that year. I guess if I had to make a prediction for the early voting numbers in Iowa this year, they would look like this:
Dems 44%
Reps 31%
Ind 24%
This would still put us pretty far ahead in terms of the early vote count, I imagine. And by the way, I just called the SOS office in Iowa and they informed me that yes, these early voting numbers include ballots from all counties in Iowa.