http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/996108/posts Absentee Ballots Already Cast May Defeat Davis
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Monday, October 6, 2003 | Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
Posted on 10/06/2003 1:14 PM EDT by tellw
ORIGINAL TITLE: Davis needs big last-minute boost to defeat recall
If the polls are any indication, the Democrats are going to need Herculean election-day support to pull Gov. Gray Davis' bacon out of the fire.
Reason: Even as polls show the race narrowing, the fact is some 2 million absentee ballots -- possibly 20 percent of the total recall vote -- already have been cast by mail.
If the "pre-groping" polling was right, it's likely that up to 56 percent of those absentee votes will be in favor of the recall.
Given the early voting, Democrats will likely need at least a 52 percent "no" on the recall vote at the ballot box -- a significantly higher number that even the most optimistic Democratic polls have shown so far.
I don't think you can figure on the absentee ballots splitting up the same way the polls were splitting at the ti the absentees were cast. It's not a random cross section of the population that votes absentee. Usually, they tend to e more Republican, while votes cast on election day tend to tilt more Democrat. However, in this election it is possible that the absentees will actually favor Davis, since the hard core Dems already knew they were going to vote "no", while Republicans might have wanted to wait until the last minute before deciding which candidate to back.
But in any case, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that the responses on Part 1 in absentee ballots will reflect poll results that were being taken while the absentees were being cast.