This is awesome but my guess Romney got a big lead with the early voting. (I think early voting should be outlawed for this very reason that a lot can happen in two weeks.)
From the article:
Florida allows early voting, and Romney leads among those voters by 11 points. Gingrich leads by 12 among those who have not yet voted. Fourteen percent (14%) have already cast their vote.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/new-romney-firewall_617425.html?page=1
Bottom of the page, and top of the page 2 linked there, Stephen Hayes refers to the Romney effort w/r/t the early ballots.
Apparently early voting did not begin until last week, when Gingrich was already surging. We may hope Romney gets no more than one percent of a boost from any early ballots; and if Gingrich’s performance on Jan 31 is anything like that of Jan 21, one percent won’t save Mitt Romney.
I doubt it is all that much.
It would assume all of those voters were chomping at the bit to vote for him (doubtful), then it would have to be almost unanimous vote for him to be a factor (unlikely).
The majority of the votes will now happen between now and Tues.
Yes, early voting may be a fly in the ointment, but with a lead this big (if it holds), Gingrich is likely to still win Florida.
The encouraging thing is the national polls are starting to shift.
At least early voting sort of negates the typical “October” surprise, which almost always is used against our guys.
That being said, I’m off to go early vote for Newt here in Tampa.
In addition to which, absentee ballots started going out on Dec 17th for military and overseas voters. Some voted for Rick Perry and others already out of the race and are asking for their ballots back. No can do!
I’ve outlawed early voting in pubbie primaries for myself. As you say, there’s just too much that can happen in the last two weeks before the primary, as we all just saw in SC.
People who vote early have already made up their mind and have no intention of switching their votes. I voted early yesterday just because I am going to be very busy the rest of the entire week and into Monday before I can get back home. If for some reason I cannot get back to vote before the end of the day Tuesday, I am screwed. It happened to me about 8 years ago and it will not happen again.
I will not trust an absentee vote to be delivered by our postal system so this is the only means to make sure my vote is placed with the precinct where I live.