[LS]

We know the splits in most counties but are missing two key counties, Warren (deep red) and Montgomery (slightly blue). We know 25,000 absentees are out in Montgomery, but won't know the party registrations until sometime next week.

So far, Cayahoga has about 100,000 out (heavy Dem, perhaps 3:1 county) and the splits were about 54,000D, 24,000R, and 22,000I. I don't know what 08 final splits were, but this is certainly not better for Dems than 08, and perhaps worse. If you include Is going Romney's way, especially at 10%, this is ok.

Franklin (Columbus) shows a surprising 4,000 R lead so far.

Hamilton (most, but not all of red Cincy) has a 5,500 R lead, and Starke (30,000 Dem registration advantage) has a 700 R lead. If Warren and Hamilton exceed Cuyahoga, we're good. If Franklin and Montgomery offset, we're good. If we come out of Franklin and Montgomery with a lead (assuming a Cuyahoga/Warren-Ham break even) then I think OH is safe.

Long way to go, and a lot of ifs.

[thingumbob]

Any news about Summit or Medina counties numbers?.....

A lot of the people who work in Cleveland live in these counties too and Summit includes the Akron area

[Ravi]

Also this in 2008 for Franklin county:

Obama - 59.7% (334,684 votes)
McCain - 39.0% (218,478 votes)

About 44% of those votes were absentee. This year I would would expect that absentee total to push 50% of total votes in Franklin, wouldn’t ya think? So if there are more repubs requesting and returning ballots compared to dems right now, assuming they’re voting for Romney, then this in and of itself is a good indicator based on face value.