And just like that, we have taken the lead in Florida after just two days of early in-person voting.
There are only six days left of early in-person in Florida so the next few days will be crucial for the Obama campaign. As the Miami Herald points out, turnout dropped precipitously from Saturday to Sunday. However, let's remember two all-important details:
Both the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign had ramped up efforts for increased absentee voter turnout PRIOR to the early in-person voting period. The absentee voting skyrocketed and over one million people had already voted before the early in-person voting began. And secondly, there is usually a dropoff from Saturday to Sunday for early voting. The exact same thing happened in Nevada yesterday across the board. Additionally, although turnout dropped among Democrats (a decline of 36%), there was a steeper drop among Republicans (a decline of 39%).
Here are the latest figures:
Early voting only:
Dems 251,110 (48.93%)
Reps 177,958 (34.68)
Inds 84,121 (16.39%)
TOTAL 513,189
Here are the additional votes since the last report:
Dems +105,940
Reps +72,010
Inds +36,902
The Democratic percentage of early votes cast went up a third of a percentage point while the Republican percentage of early votes cast dropped almost a full percentage point after the second day of early voting. We rocked yesterday, despite the Miami Herald's concern-trolling over the turnout dropping from Saturday to Sunday.
Here are all the numbers, including both early voting and absentee/mail-in ballots:
Dems 784,013 (42.04%)
Reps 773,898 (41.50%)
Inds 306,980 (16.46%)
TOTAL 1,864,891
This trend of Democratic dominance should theoretically continue until election day. Here's how the numbers looked as of Oct. 30th, 2008, just prior to election day:
Dems 45.6% or roughly 1,532,200
Reps 38.2% or roughly 1,283,554
Inds 16.2% or roughly 544,334
TOTAL 3,360,088
Given how things are going, we should easily eclipse the total early vote from 2008 because Florida has already seen an average of about 260,000 voters on each of the two early voting days so far. If we continue to see this average, there will be an additional 1.5 million votes by the end of the early voting and that doesn't even take into account mail-in ballots, or the sharp rise we will see in early voting just before election day. I predict we will see at least 4 million mail-in or in-person early votes in Florida by election day.
It's amazing what passes for journalism these days. The person who wrote the article at the Miami Herald doesn't seem to know what he/she is talking about.
Anyway, I am heartened by the Sunday numbers and by the polls showing how close it is in Florida. It truly all comes down to turnout. If we show up, we win.
Here is a link to the 2008 numbers: http://web.archive.org/...
Here is a link to the current numbers (Miami Herald): http://miamiherald.typepad.com/...