Alcon's all-purpose EARLY VOTING & REGISTRATION thread

[Lief 🗽]

The Obama campaign is really big on early voting (or at least they were during the Texas primary). Then again, Obama won among early voters in Texas, and a lot of good that did him in the end.

[Lief 🗽]

Black turnout very high in Georgia early voting

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2008/10/02/black_early_voting.html

[Lief 🗽]

So, of the votes currently cast, Barack Obama and Jim Martin are currently winning the state of Georgia. Probably won't last, but it's still fun to say.

[Lief 🗽]

Still, this post also shows the reason why blacks were such good slaves.

...

[Lief 🗽]

Er... Ohio definitely has in-person early voting, contrary to what the map says. I spent 3 days there last weekend canvassing, and we were pushing early voting hard.

[Lief 🗽]

He just needs blacks at 30% to win the state, so 35% is phenomenal. Even the high 20s would be great, though McCain would win.

[Lief 🗽]

How do exit polls work when there's such heavy early voting turnout? Something like 1/3 of people are going to vote before election day, so exit pollsters on election day won't be getting representative samples of the entire electorate.

[Lief 🗽]

Just running through Harris County places:

Early voting is much higher in the black parts of town and the one or two liberal white parts.  Ok, but not great in the white Republican areas.  Pathetic in the Hispanic areas.

About what I would expect.

If I remember correctly, Hispanic turnout wasn't that great during early voting in the primary either. They still came out in force on election day though.

[Lief 🗽]

A few theories about young people early voting:

1) Most significantly, I think, early voting locations are usually fewer than regular voting locations. When I was canvassing in Columbus, for instance, the only early voting location of the entire city was downtown, which is quite a bit away from the OSU campus, the main location of young voters in the city. The Obama people were busing college students down to the voting place, but if they wait until election day, they'll be able to just vote at the polling location in their precinct, which is much closer. This is true of most college students, I would think.

2) Absentee voting. Unless you change your registration when you go to a new college, which a significant number of students do not, you're going to vote absentee, which to my knowledge isn't being counted along with the early vote statistics.

3) Young people are also generally better at procrastinating and thinking that the norm doesn't apply to them. I know that's a generalization, but it's at least in party true. I'm sure plenty of young people are just putting off voting until voting day, and assuming that the lines won't really be as long as everyone says they are. This could potentially be kind of problematic for the Obama people.