The Georgia Secretary of State put up the final early voting numbers this morning, and the final total is 2,020,839.
Incredible turnout by African-American voters gives Barack Obama enough of an edge that Tuesday could be very close here.
Internals after the jump.
Thursday votes: 194,846
Friday votes: 253,700
Total votes: 2,020,839
AA Thursday votes: 66,871
AA% of Thursday votes: 34.3%
AA Friday votes: 87,229
AA% of Friday votes: 34.4%
AA total votes: 705,194
Total AA active RVs: 1,445,153
AA % of total votes: 34.9%
% of AA active RVs already voted: 48.8%
White total votes: 1,220,116
Total white active RVs: 3,176,520
% of white active RVs already voted: 38.4%
The Friday turnout numbers are very consistent with the turnout numbers for Wednesday and Thursday.
Consistently throughout the early voting period, there has been a 10-point enthusiasm gap. Even if that comes down to 32%-33% on Tuesday, it will represent a tremendous shift in the voting demographics that could swing the election to Obama with only marginal improvement with white voters from Kerry's 24% take of white voters in 2004.
As I wrote on Friday about Obama's chances in Georgia:
If the black vote stays at 35% through the election, Obama could win with with the same 24% of the white vote Kerry got:
Race % % Obama Total Obama
Black 35 0.95 33.25
White 60 0.24 14.40
Other 5 0.50 2.50
Total 100 50.15
If Obama holds the early voting pattern and holds the Kerry percentage, he wins. For every point the black percentage goes down, Obama needs about about a 1.5-point bump in his percentage of the white vote.
I think if Obama wins Georgia, it will be with 31%-32% of the total vote coming from black voters and winning 27%-28% of the white voters -- both very doable.
ADD:
One negative: The enthusiasm gap between Dem.-leaning Dekalb County and GOP-leaning Cobb County has closed some over the past week. The two counties cast roughly the same number of votes in 2004.
Earlier this week, Dekalb County had turned out about 42,000 votes more than Cobb County, which is likely attributable to higher registration in Dekalb since 2004 and the enthusiasm gap holding down turnout in Cobb County.
By the end of early voting, the gap was 34,125. That may indicate that some of the big surge on Friday -- up 59,000 from Thursday -- may have skewed redder than earlier in the week.
At any rate, turnout here will be gi-NORMOUS!