Posted on 11/04/2008 8:56:57 AM PST by johncocktoasten
Republicans Kept Pace in Colorado's Early Voting
These results from early voting in Colorado are fascinating.
Out of 1,704,280 "early votes" cast, over 50% of registered voters, the percentage breakdown was:
Dem 33.44% (569,875) Rep 32.64% (556,241) Ind. 24.71% (421,124)
The print edition of this story shows a graphic with the following information:
Voting by absentee ballot:
Total 1,339,065
Rep. 441,841 Dem. 441,203 Ind. 311,196
Voting by early voting:
Total 365,215
Dem. 128,672 Rep. 114,400
If I remember correctly, Republicans traditionally have an advantage in early voting in Colorado, so this isn't unalloyed good news. But I generally concur with the Colorado reader who noticed this that "Republicans held their own in both types of early voting in Colorado despite the unprecedented effort by Democrats to get a jump; only 8/10s of 1 percent difference... which casts doubt on the higher Democrat party ID in recent polls."
The Oct. 30 Marist poll, for example, had Obama leading early voters, 59 to 41. Now, perhaps there are a lot of Obamacans in this state, or perhaps the independents overwhelmingly preferred Obama. But then again, maybe not.
It's possible that most of the voters who show up today are Democrats, and it's possible that the independents prefer Obama. But judging from the party breakdown of early voting, the Democrats have not yet generated any signficant Party ID advantage among the state's electorate as a whole.
More Dems requested mail in ballots than Republicans. Republicans beat them by 600 mail ins even though dems requested 25000 more ballots.
By party ID, Republicans have a 10000 voter advantage as far as who can show up today and vote.
Obama has consistently been running 6% behind his party ID margin in polls and in early vote results. These results give him a tie in Party ID in Colorado. That essentially would leave him 6% behind McCain if the trends hold.
There is a reason John McCain is in Grand Junction this am. If McCain wins CO and VA, Obama is bye bye.
He will win both!
I posted on this a little differently yesterday or day before. It looks like 1.2 million absentee ballots have been returned out of 1.6 million mailed out. And it looks like dems asked for 25000 more ballots than repubs. So there are more dems than repubs who have not filled out their ballots and mailed them back in. They cannot vote today unless they bring their absentee ballot with them - what are the chances of this happening? Also what are the chances these ballots were misplaced or ignored by dems - I would say pretty high
Nice, thanks.
I have a lot of family in VA and PA, they are very confident McCain will win there as well.
Yes . . . if he holds FL and wins OH. Pray!
Better yet, what are the chances that the early ballet requests by the Dimms were fraudulent, mailed to non-existent addresses or delivered to empty foreclosed homes through the A-CORN HOLES?
Good news! Thanks.
Heavy turnout in my very repub precinct in suburbs of denver. Hope this holds.
Hi Mate,
Thanks for the info. We continue to keep the faith.
One question: how come the info you gave differs from this one below?
http://elections.gmu.edu/early_vote_2008.html
Or is the guy above part of the Lib-Riggers processs?
Cheers!
Keep in mind that in 2004, the turnout was D29, R38, and I33, with Bush winning the state by 52-47 representing approximately 99,500 votes.
We know that four years ago, Republicans had an early voting advantage, while this year they are very slightly behind. Here’s my question. Did the Dems really find a bunch of new voters (if so, how many) in CO from four years go, or did simply more of the same Democrats who voted on election day last time vote early this time? We know that the Obama campaign has spent a lot of time and money trying to get more democrats in CO to vote early. I don’t remember Kerry doing this. He had far fewer resources and was putting them into more traditional larger battleground states such as OH, PA, and FLA (as he should have).
I am also seeing the continuation of a trend. As Geraghty points out at NRO, a Marist poll claimed that Obama lead early voting in CO 59-41. These numbers tell us that it is nothing close to 59-41. Again, it seems that more Obama supporters than McCain supporters are willing to talk to pollsters and this is skewing all the polls with huge Dem oversamples that don’t attempt to reweight party ID to reflect actual voting history.
I voted early in Colorado by mail-in ballot. I live near Boulder so all the Obammican signs are discouraging. I think to myself...”I see stupid people. They are everywhere. They don’t even know how stupid they are.”
I know the 0bama campaign has really really really pressed for early voting from its followers. I think they know many of their followers are flaky, so wanted to strike while the iron was still hot.
They were pressing early voting hard even in bluest of the blue areas of CA.
So in 04 Reps underperformed party ID by 4%. If Republicans turn out heavy today, we have a chance in CO. The GOTV in CO is 2nd or 3rd best in the nation.
An additional hurdle: I believe that CO voters cannot drop their absentee ballots at their normal voting precinct: they have to drop it at the county election headquarters.
This is one independent who voted for McCain/Palin!
Vote early, then vote absentee, then show up at a polling place on electon day (as many times and places as possible), no ID necessary....
It wasn't that Republicans underperformed, but that Independents went 52-45 for Kerry. Also, the CO exit poll apparently undersampled Dems ever so slightly (about 0.5%).
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