Here are the latest figures out of Iowa. This will be my last Iowa early voting up date of the 2012 election.
Here are the cumulative numbers for the absentee ballot requests:
Dems 312,741 (42.18%)
Reps 229,507 (30.95%)
Inds 198,263 (26.74%)
Oth 999 (negligible)
TOTAL 741,510
Here are the new ballot requests since the last report:
Dems +6,322
Reps +6,136
Inds +7,111
And now, here are the cumulative numbers for actual ballots cast:
Dems 281,966 (41.89%)
Reps 215,439 (32.01%)
Inds 174,850 (25.98%)
Oth 869 (negligible)
TOTAL 673,124
Here are the ballots cast since the previous daily report:
Dems +11,170
Reps +9,742
Inds +11,897
Once again, Democrats and Independents clearly got the better of Republicans in early voting. I might as well repeat this once again: Democrats have led Republicans in actual ballots cast in each and every individual daily report. There has not been a single day when they out-voted us. Not. One. Day.
In 2008, 545,739 votes were cast before election day. Currently, 673,124 votes have been cast already, and the absentee ballots that are still being processed will be added to this count later. I expect around 1.6 million people to cast a vote for President in Iowa, so this early vote represents about 42% of that total. We now lead in ballots cast by 66,527. By the end of early voting in 2008, we led Republicans by about 94,000 ballots cast. By the end of early voting in 2004 (about 460,000 ballots cast) we were ahead by 52,000 ballots cast. This is a relatively good position to be in, because 2004 was essentially a draw in Iowa, and in 2008, Obama stomped McCain by over 9 percentage points. Being between these two scenarios = victory for Obama.
I would like to just repeat this section of my diary from yesterday:
In other news, since the beginning of October, we have gained significant ground on Republicans in Iowa in terms of voter registration.
Here are the current statistics for active registered voters:
Dems 628,043
Reps 629,443
Inds 694,558
TOTAL 1,952,044
A razor-thin margin now separates us from taking the lead over Republicans among active voters.
Here are the additions since the beginning of October:
Dems +16,759
Reps +7,267
Inds +19,387
The great thing is that Iowa has same-day voter registration on election day and that's only going to help our cause. In 2008, 47,000 people in Iowa registered to vote on election day. Btw, New Hampshire and Wisconsin also have election day registration. Therefore, if the margins are as close in those states as the polls would suggest, election day registration could put us over the top.
These figures look good, but there is still work to be done! GOTV!
Here is a link to the Iowa SOS website: http://sos.iowa.gov/....