With all the polls and chest thumping by both sides, it's been hard to find real, serious data that provides some insight into what may happen here in Ohio.
Until this morning.
Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report has a comprehensive list of absentee/early voting results by county that indicate very good news for Ohio Republicans.
You can read it for yourself by clicking here.
But here's the down and dirty.
Wasserman looked at absentee/early data by county from 2004 and 2008, and compared it to what has been officially reported by the Secretary of State.
The results?
In counties that voted Kerry in '04 and Obama in '08, total votes are down 4.1%. Total votes are down 40,395.
In counties that voted Bush in '04 and McCain in '08, total votes are up 14.4%. Total votes are up 81,696.
It's important to note that these aren't all votes for Obama or Romney.
But they are a strong indication of the likely turnout problems facing Democrats in their key blue counties. And more importantly, it shows the incredible bump in enthusiasm in key red counties.
These results actually prompted Wasserman to tweet, "In my view, Obama can't afford for E-Day turnout '08-'12 trend to mirror early vote trend and still win OH".
In other words, Obama needs to hope for an incredible turnout of his own supporters. On top of that, he also needs to pray the hundreds of thousands of Republicans who stayed home in 2008 decide to stay home.
And if those enthusiasm numbers in early voting are reflected in today's vote, President Obama is in big trouble.
At the end of the day, it's the same story - get out the vote.
Find your polling location here: http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/pollinglocation.aspx?page=361
Find your Ohio GOP e-slate card here: http://ohiogop.org/ballot
Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors.
The Republican ones, anyway. And the ones who are still struggling to get a job.
We've heard from sources that the ORP slate card already has over 103,500 downloads. With an election that could be decided by hundreds, that could make the difference.
Does the Early vote data reflect the last 5 days of early voting?
ReplyDeleteLooking good! I am particularly interested in Lake and Tuscarawas counties in NE Ohio and Wood, Ottawa, and Sandusky counties in NW Ohio. These are counties that Bush won in 2008 and Obama flipped in 2012.
ReplyDeleteHamilton in the SW is another example of the R to D switch.
If these 6 counties are going back to the red side -- this might also be an indication of a trend?
Apparently, you stopped reading the rest of his Twitter feed:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/265846217722974208