More Trafficking - Early Voting Apparently Really Really Favors Dems

So, I'm probably going to end up being a big fat hypocrite.
I've got one more shot, then I'm going to end up voting on election day.

While the Cleveland media were talking about waits of more than half an hour in NE Ohio earlier this week, waits were peaking at around two hours at Vets Memorial. I've been by Vets 3 times this week. The first time there was a 90 minute wait, the second and third time there was a wait to get into the parking lot.

Franklin County is providing daily updates of mail-in absentee voting totals on their website, but there is no equivalent source of easy and convenient data on in-person voting. After my experiences this week I was very curious, and lucky me, I got my hands on a spreadsheet showing early in-person voting totals along with mail-in absentee voting.

The usual caveats apply - I can't verify the contents of this (Update - The Dispatch backs it up). Given the apparent source of the data, though, I'm pretty sure that there are readers who can:



These numbers are, to me, jaw dropping. Dems are supposedly outpolling Republicans 10 to 1 at Vets Memorial, 3-2 in mail-in, and 2-1 overall. All told, the early vote breakdown as of 10/29 in Franklin appears to be 44% Dem, 39% Unaffiliated, 17% Republican.


In the Franklin portion of OH-12, In-Person Dems outnumber In-Person Republicans 18 to 1, and mail-in 2-1. There have been 83,394 in OH-12, with thousands of votes continuing to come in. In 2006, there were 150,395 total votes cast in Franklin County in the 12th district race. In 2004, there were 196,249 total votes cast in the OH-12 race in Franklin County. So, it certainly seems that ~40% of the Franklin county vote in OH-12 is already in the bank.

Now, we don't know how these folks voted. Remember, anybody who pulled a Dem primary ballot is a "registered Democrat," but some unknown number of those folks were Limbaugh-inspired troublemakers.

Either way, having that many D's already in means that the Dems will be able to go further and deeper than ever before with their GOTV efforts this year.