Y'all don't get TOO excited:
Early voting ALWAYS favors the Republicans.
Democrats can't be bothered to actually make the extra effort and planning to vote early or absentee... They gotta wait until the bus from the DNC picks them up, they get their pack of cigarettes and bottle of 'Mad Dog' from the handlers and led by the hand to the booth and told which buttons to push.
Well, I know in our neck of the woods, we had a really aggressive campaign to get R's and Indep leaning R's (who had not previously voted absentee) to request absentee ballots. We beat the dems badly in this area--our absentee requests were up way more than theirs. So don't discount it.
The Nashville Tennessean, a liberal fish wrapper, blasted across their headlines the following, "Corker Leads Ford by 8 Points In CNN Poll". This tells me that they are running scared.
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061031/NEWS0206/61030052
Pray for rain.
I wouldn't necessarily call it excited in the winning way, I would call it MOTIVATED.