Thursday, October 30, 2008

Early Voting Hype

TW: My gratuitous take on all of the talk about early voting surges and its presumed impact in favor of Obama is that it is largely hype. The blogospheres on the left and even the right are going crazy about it. Wed's headline in the Chicago Tribune trumpeted the "just incredible" early turnout.

I do not doubt that more folks are voting early but I believe it is a secular shift to more people voting early in general rather than some indication of a profound shift in turnout in favor of Obama. The local election boards are pushing the concept. We received a letter from our election board yesterday urging us to vote since our precinct went from 500 to 1,300 registrants (why I do not know as we have zero close elections in our district, our Congressman gets about 90% for instance, Obama will win IL by about 30%). What about increasing capacity on election day instead?

No doubt Obama's turn out the vote effort is strong including epic turnout for African-Americans. But I am skeptical that the double digit leads some are trumpeting are reflective of underlying trends.

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