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Early Vote Update: Cuyahoga County now 2.5:1 in Democratic/Republican Early Vote Request; Approaching 2008 participation numbers.

by ModernEsquire on October 28, 2010 ·

According to this chart, in 2008, 38.5% of the turnout in Cuyahoga County was early vote. Assuming a similar number of votes turning out in this midterm as 2008, and we’re at 31.1% and still growing. It’s entirely possible we’ll see as much of an early vote turnout in Cuyahoga County this year than we did in 2008. Remarkable.

Also, the ratio has become decidedly bluer. The ratio is now at roughly 2.5 Democrats requesting an early vote for every Republican. It appears, as I stated, that Democratic early voters just may be slower in turning in the ballots before the election day. The difference between the request/return rate for Republicans and Democrats is a 5% GOP advantage (then again, the Cuyahoga GOP has only a third of the requests to track than the Democrats do.

Ted Strickland, reportedly, needs 100,000 vote margin in Cuyahoga County in order to win (I don’t know if I share that assessment.) Regardless, assuming that the registered partisans are not crossing over in the Governor’s race (which they rarely do and to the extent they do the polls suggest it would be a wash anyways), Governor Strickland could be half to three-quarters of a way there to get that margin through early votes alone.

If Cuyahoga County Democrats can turn out there vote on Election Day, he should have no problem as the election day vote in that county is set up to be potentially even more Democratic than the early vote. Nearly half (47%) of all registered Republicans have requested an early ballot, but only (34%) of all registered Democrats have. So not only are we overwhelming them in numbers in early votes, but we’re set to blow the doors off them on Tuesday, too. That’s where President Obama’s appearance comes into play.

In Summit County, Democrats make up 47% of all early vote request/ballots. Democrats are outnumbering Republicans still by a little more than 2:1 in early voting there. Republicans make up only 22% of the total early vote population in that County. That’s a twenty-five point gap in Summit County!

Meanwhile a new memo released by the DNC on the early vote (which probably obtained the data from ODP/OFA) shows the hard data which was the basis of the nearly 10 point lead in early voting the OFA claimed last week.

DNCearlyVote -

Those numbers work out to be that Democrats make up just under 44% of the early vote turnout to the Republicans making up only 33% of the early vote population. That is a ten-point lead Statewide as the OFA claimed. While I’m sure this information is already dated, I don’t believe the numbers are likely to change in the early vote in the Republican’s favor between now and the Election Day.

For the record, the Ohio Republican Party has reportedly denied that it’s getting beat this badly in the early vote (although they have conceded that they’re behind), although it’s hard to imagine how the OFA, DNC, and ODP would be fudging the statewide totals. That would seem to be an easy thing, if untrue, for the ORP to knock down, but they’ve released no information to support their claims that the Democratic advantage is not nearly that pronounced.

In today’s SurveyUSA poll, for example, 22% of the respondents said that they have already voted. In that subgroup, Ted Strickland led… by nine points. Of those who haven’t voted, but are deemed “likely” voters SurveyUSA (which has been as bad as Quinnipiac) shows Kasich leading by seven (highly doubtful figure.) Regardless, never before in this race have we seen a poll that show a divergence between whom is deemed to be a likely voter and the people who have actually voted.

The idea that the Democrats can only turnout voters during the early vote is absurd. ODP and OFA have been planning just as hard and organizing for GOTV on election day as they have the early vote. The same organizational advantage that has created a ten-point Democratic advantage doesn’t disappear at midnight on November 1st.

That’s why I signed up to volunteer all of Saturday in Butler County—the heart of Boehner country. In the morning, I’m doing a literature drop. In the afternoon, GOTV calls. One day to save the next four years in Ohio from disaster. Who’s with me?

Let’s finish this.