The Freepers are having orgasms over this nugget of information contained in the latest ABC News tracking poll report (the overall result was K-49, B-48):
Nine percent of "likely" voters in the ABC News tracking poll say they've voted for president, either by absentee ballot or early voting, a number that's jumped in the last week. Fifty-one percent say they went for George W. Bush, 47 percent for John Kerry.
Full link here. Why not to panic after the jump.
These numbers are de facto exit polling. So we're fucked, right?
Not exactly.
First of all, those who have already voted early represent 9% of the total sample. 1,666 likely voters x 0.09 = 150 early voters. Whaddya think is the MOE on that? Probably something like 10%.
More importantly, if those numbers are accurate, they are actually GOOD for us.
Why? Because the states that allow early voting are:
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Iowa
Nevada
New Mexico
North Carolina
Oregon
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
By my count, that includes two dead-red states Bush should win by 20%+ (TX, GA), four Bush-leaners (NC, TN, VA, WV), four swing states (CO, FL, IA, NV), and only two leaning-Kerry states (OR and NM). NO deep blue states in the bunch.
So, bottom line is that Bush should be getting 55% or more of the early vote. The fact that he isn't suggests that he's in trouble, and makes me suspect that we might have a slight lead in the early voting in FL, and maybe even some of the others.
(Sorry if this has already been diaried by now --my boss came by and I had to pretend to work for a while.)
Update [2004-10-26 18:27:15 by Buck Fush]: Thanks to Ben P for correcting me. The complete list of early-voting states is:
Idaho (solid R)
Montana (solid R)
North Dakota (solid R)
Iowa (swing)
Michigan (swing)
Kansas (solid R)
Oklahoma (solid R)
Texas (solid R)
Arizona (leans R)
New Mexico (leans D)
North Carolina (leans R)
West Virginia (leans R)
Tennessee (leans heavily R)
Georgia (solid R)
Florida (swing)
Arkansas (swing)
Louisiana (solid R)
Colorado (swing)
Vermont (solid D)
California (solid D)
Nevada (leans R)
Lots more R's than D's in that bunch. The poll also included absentee balloting so in that respect it is a national poll, but given the reports of huge lines at the early voting stations, I suspect the absentee-voter sample in this poll is much smaller than the in-person early-voter sample.