Promising Early Voting Numbers in Iowa and Ohio for Democrats

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Sun Oct-03-10 04:01 PM
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Promising Early Voting Numbers in Iowa and Ohio for Democrats

As of 10/1/2010, the Democrats have been requesting absentee ballots and returning them at Requests according to the Iowa SOS.

Party Ballots Requested Ballots Returned
Democrats 70,992 15,556
Republicans 24,736 7,636
No Party 20,830 3,608
Other 72 13
Total 116,630 26,813

Turnout has been especially strong in Johnson County where University of Iowa is located due in part to the 21-only ballot question. The question is trying to overturn the recent 21-only ordinance which made the minimum age of patrons in bars after 10 p.m. from 19 to 21.

After one week of early voting, Johnson County is on track for a higher early turnout than the midterm election four years ago, according to the Johnson County Auditor’s Office.

More than 6,400 absentee ballots have been requested for the Nov. 2 general election, which is about 1,000 more than were requested in 2006 by this time.

A total of 1,319 votes were cast at a satellite location at Burge Residence Hall on Tuesday. That is the most votes ever cast at a satellite location in Johnson County, Slockett said.

Other good news in Johnson County:

I think it’s clear that students are driving the early, in-person voting here in Johnson County," said county Auditor Tom Slockett.

Any Iowa City voter could have cast a ballot at Burge on Tuesday, so it’s not as if every vote came from a student. But Slockett said Wednesday the majority of all those who have voted so far in this year’s election have been of the student-age population. (There were 340 voters at the UI’s Phillips Hall on Monday.)

Early voting will continue up until Election Day, Nov. 2. Most of the satellite sites are on or near the UI campus due to a record number of student-driven petitions to place satellite voting locations on campus.

OHIO:
There has been good news in Ohio early voting as well.

Democrats were outpacing the Republicans 3-1 on the first day of voting in Hamilton County. Some Democrats were so excited vote early, they camped out overnight at their polling station.

Jessie Sears of Avondale was one of about 30 people – nearly all Democrats and members of the NAACP – who camped out overnight on Broadway downtown to be there when the Hamilton County Board of Elections began its in-person early-voting at 8 a.m.

Fred Wideman of North Avondale. Wideman did not sleep over, but came about 7 a.m. to wait in line to cast his ballot.

"I’m here to prove the polls wrong when they say that certain people won’t show up," said Wideman. The 69-year-old said he was referring to African-American voters, of which he is one. "I can’t speak for everybody, but, for my part, I’ll going to make a statement," Wideman said.

Democratic Coordinated Campaign is happy with the numbers they are seeing so far:

More Democrats than Republicans are requesting ballots.

A tabulation of all 88 counties shows that nearly 20 percent more Democrats than Republicans have requested ballots.

Democratic ballot requests outnumber Republican ballot requests statewide by margins in the tens of thousands.

Infrequent voting Democrats – whose turnout is key to our victory – are requesting ballots in higher numbers than infrequent voting Republicans.

Given what we know about the unaffiliated voters who have requested ballots, we are confident that they, too, lean toward Democrats.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/10/3/907389/-Promising-Early-Voting-Numbers-in-Iowa-and-Ohio