Oct. 26, 2004-- While the 2004 election is locked in a virtual dead heat, for nearly one in 10 likely voters it's all over but the counting: They've already cast their ballots.Nine percent of "likely" voters in the ABC News tracking poll say they've voted for president, either by absentee ballot or early voting, a number that's jumped in the last week. Fifty-one percent say they went for George W. Bush, 47 percent for John Kerry. [snip]
There's been a recent jump in early voting: The number of registered voters who say they've already voted has risen from 1 percent in the first three weeks of ABC's tracking poll, through last Thursday, to 7 percent now. It reaches 9 percent when computed among the ranks of likely voters only.
Early voting is more prevalent in the West than in other regions. (Oregon is one reason — all voting there is by mail — and there's high absentee voting in several other Western states.) Early voters are more likely to be older, women and following the race very closely. They're also a bit more likely to be Republicans than Democrats.
So if it turns out that Bush was an AWOL retarded draft-dodging pot-smoking giving-terrorists-hundreds of tons of explosives-nincompoop, it's too late. Our votes will be counted even if we're all hit by a dump truck tomorrow morning.