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Oct

27

Ohio: Absentee ballot numbers, three large counties’ early voting patterns


The Ohio blogosphere is big. On the left and on the right. BlogNetNews Ohio is a good place to keep an eye on what’s going on, but, like any other state, we have our batches of blogs on one side or the other of the political spectrum that will blogswarm or astroturf talking points or certain incidents, so always keep that in mind (I’ve instigated one or two in my time, most notably one where I convinced 18 other bloggers to write entries in a different foreign language to protest English-only anti-immigrant laws).

Anyway – I’d like to highlight three blog posts that demonstrate some serious number crunching and thought regarding what might happen in Ohio come next Tuesday.

As a pre-amble, here’s some info on the number of absentee ballots that are in play in Ohio, courtesy of Ohio Daily Blog:

Today Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced key statistics on absentee ballots, early voting, and anticipated turnout. Highlights:

* Through October 24th, 221,368 Ohioans requested in-person absentee ballots and 1,234,996 requested mail-in absentee ballots – an unprecendented total of 1,456,364 absentee ballot requests. (This is the first presidential election in which any Ohio voter can request an absentee ballot without a reason.)* Brunner expects “historic” voter turnout of 80%, or 6,480,000 Ohio voters, and anticipates absentee ballots could account for up to 1/3 of those voters. To date, absentee ballot requests represent 22.5% of that anticipated turnout.

* During the one-week “overlap” period for same-day in-person registration and voting, 652,875 absentee ballots were requested, of which 585,467 were mail-in and 67,408 were in-person. However, only about 12,800 of Ohioans requesting in-person absentee ballots also registered on the same day.

The highest turnout precentage in any prior presidential election (since 1977 when such percentages became available) was 77.15% in 1992. The turnout in 2004 was 71.77%.

Please visit ODB for the rest of the commentary – it’s good, charts too.

First up of the county analyses is Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) from Political Science 216 (as of 10/21)

So far, 14,510 folks have fought a crappy parking situation and voted in person at the Board of Elections at Euclid Avenue. How did they vote? I don’t know, but I’ll project that it was by a 2:1 margin for Obama. Kerry beat Bush by that margin in Cuyahoga County in 2004. This number is on the conservative side, as I would imagine more folks from Cleveland (Democrats) voted at the Board office in Cleveland than did people from far away Bay Village and Chagrin Falls (Republicans).

So, give 9,673 votes to Obama and 4,836 to McCain… add that to my projection from Sunday (assuming everyone who got a ballot returns it) and the pre-November 4th voting in our county looks like this:

OBAMA 149,451 and MCCAIN 72,869.

Well, is that good or bad for Obama? Sure, it’s good, but is it good enough.

Go there for the answer.

From Poli Sci 216, we also get this anaylsis of Franklin County (Columbus) (as of 10/23):

According to public records, 83,424 Democrats have voted at the Franklin County Board of Elections so far, or have requested a ballot – one would assume they’ll vote. 99,746 Independents have done so as well, as have 42,832 Republicans.
Now, let’s do some math. According to the Ohio Newspaper Poll, Obama leads McCain among Democrats, 88% to 8%. That comes out to 73,413 for Obama, 6,674 of McCain.
According to the same poll, McCain wins Republicans, 85% to 10%. That’s 4,284 votes for Obama, 36,407 for McCain.
Among Independents, McCain leads 45% to 40%. According to my calculator, that’s 39,898 for Obama and 44,886 for McCain.
Add it all up, in Franklin County the score is…
Obama 117,595 and McCain 87,967.
Again, visit the post to get the rest of the analysis.
Lastly, we have Psychobilly Democrats on Summit County (Akron) (10/26) (check out the DEVO-ized Obama logo):
Here’s the assumptions in my calculations: the BOE indicates 355,210 RVs as of the primary to which I’m going to add a 5% boost for the general to 372,970. Of that total, I expect a turnout of 80%, which is nearly 4 points higher than the 2004 presidential turnout.

To the numbers:

372970 RVs (100%)
298376 LVs (80)

Obama 182009 (61%)
McCain 116367 (39)
Diff 65642 (raw)

Now, you knew Obama was going to win SumCo, so why is that important? Kerry lost Ohio by 118601. Obama’s projected win total is 27617 votes greater than Kerry’s in 2004. That increased margin in Summit County, by itself, makes up 23% Kerry’s loss margin.

In other words, assuming McCain doesn’t see similar growth in any areas expected to pull heavily for him, then Obama’s voter registration and GOTV efforts in just a handful of large counties, like Summit, could contribute enough voters to his column for victory in Ohio.

Again, way more at the blog post itself, but, as you can see, that’s three counties down, 85 more to go.  But most of them are a lot smaller.
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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:08 pm October 27th, 2008 in Barack Obama, Blogging, Campaigning, Elections, John McCain, Ohio, Politics, Predictions, Voting, WH2008 

Comments

One Response to “Ohio: Absentee ballot numbers, three large counties’ early voting patterns”

  1. 1 Carole Cohen on October 27th, 2008 11:19 pm

    85 more to go wow you will be up all night! :-) thanks though, found a lot to read with morning coffee. You rock

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