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Early voters give Obama the edge
Millions of US citizens voting early in the presidential elections are locking in Barack Obama's opinion poll lead, analysts and commentators say.
- By Daniel Dombey and Andrew Ward, Financial Times
- Published: 23:55 October 23, 2008
Washington: Millions of US citizens voting early in the presidential elections are locking in Barack Obama's opinion poll lead, analysts and commentators say.
With people already casting votes in 31 states from Florida to California, the Obama campaign is hoping that their candidate's poll advantage is already translating into an advantage in votes that John McCain, the Republican nominee, will find it hard to overcome.
Three other states - Virginia, Minnesota and Kentucky - allow early voting only if the voter can explain why he or she cannot cast a ballot on election day.
"Early voting has made comebacks harder and would tend to diminish the impact of the kind of late-breaking development that might save McCain's candidacy," said Charlie Cook, a prominent US political analyst, in a column in National Journal this week.
Battleground states
At present, a majority of polls give Obama more than 50 per cent support in national surveys, with strong backing in the battleground states that will decide the election.
In Florida, North Carolina and Nevada - three of Obama's top target states - registered Democrats have outnumbered Republicans two to one in early voting so far.
"With as many as one-third of voters likely to cast their ballot before election day, every day more are cast and the campaign is effectively over for them," Cook wrote.
"The longer Obama has this kind of lead and the more votes are cast early, the more voters are out of the pool for McCain."
This year, queues of voters across the country have confirmed that early voting is taking place on a scale greater than ever before; 20 per cent of all voters cast their ballots early in 2004, compared with 15 per cent in 2000.
The apparent increase reflects growing acceptance of the practice by states to make it easier for people to vote and to reduce pressure on polling stations on election day.
High turnout
Early voting has been underway in Virginia for weeks while others, including Florida and Colorado, started on Monday.
In Georgia, more than 750,000 people - nearly a quarter of the state's 2004 turnout - have already voted, with particularly high volumes in counties with large black populations in and around Atlanta.
In Ohio, the state that decided the 2004 election in favour of George W. Bush, registered Democrats are out-voting Republicans by more than 4-to-1 in Democratic-dominated Cuyahoga County, outstripping John Kerry's 2-to-1 margin in 2004.
In Republican-dominated Hamilton County, which Bush won by 53 per cent, Democrats have so far cast three in five early votes.
Republicans appear to have the advantage in absentee voting - which consists of mailing in ballots rather than voting in person - since it is popular among Republican-leaning older voters and members of the military.
However, such voting, though important, is not taking place on the same scale as early voting.
Pam Dickerson, a McCain voter in North Carolina, a Republican state that Obama hopes to win, said that queues in her town of Henderson were so long last week that it took three attempts to cast her vote.
"There is a heightened interest in this election, the importance of voting and need for everyone to do their part in electing our leaders," she said.
Setting out the rationale for voting early in this election Dickerson explained: "I have three kids, a job and life in general that happens on a daily basis and would not want sickness, accident, death or anything else to prevent my vote from being cast."
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