Ohio: Early Vote Polling
Ohio started early voting last week (October 2nd to be precise), and Public Policy Polling has released their most recent poll for Ohio:
The key finding on this poll may be how the early voters are breaking out. 19% of people say they’ve already cast their ballots and they report having voted for Obama by a 76-24 margin. Romney has a 51-45 advantage with those who haven’t voted yet, but the numbers make it clear that he already has a lot of ground to make up in the final three weeks before the election.
Full results here [pdf].
Among the 20 percent of people who say they have already voted, Obama has a 52 point lead, which is a huge deficit to overcome; however, I would caution against reading the end of Romney into these numbers, because early voting doesn’t end until November 2nd. (I made the mistake of predicting a Romney win in one of the primary states based on early vote polling numbers and was wrong, so that’s why I caution).
Absentee ballots were 30 percent of the vote cast in 2008 [pdf] (this does not include in-person early voting). And this year, reports show that early voting has increased over the 2008 numbers (Sources: Examiner, Toledo Blade).
