Ohio early voting ... bad for Obama?

[HurricaneDitka]

Is this true:

220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early in Ohio compared with 2008. And 30,000 more Republicans have cast their ballots compared with four years ago. That is a 250,000-vote net increase for a state Obama won by 260,000 votes in 2008.

Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82948.html

[Lord_Feldon]

I’m not sure those numbers mean a lot without an explanation of where they come from. Ohio doesn’t require party registration in advance of primaries, so a lot of people show up and get whichever ballot is more interesting. The most exciting primary in 2008 was on the Democratic ballot, but in 2012 it was on the Republican ballot, so I’d expect the GOP to have a registration advantage. Is the net increase among 2008 Republicans only, or does it include the people who switched?

[DSeid]

Probably not true, at least according to the WSJ’s take:

… Trouble is, Ohio’s peculiar election rules don’t make such measuring very easy. Voters, for instance, don’t register by party, making it hard to create good yardsticks for how Democrats or Republicans are behaving.

If you vote in a partisan primary, then county officials identify you as a member of that party. The Republicans had a very competitive presidential primary earlier this year. The Democrats didn’t. That fact alone, Democrats say, has swelled the number of voters deemed to be Republicans. …

… Perhaps no county offers a better window into Ohio than Hamilton County, which envelops Cincinnati and was for decades a Republican stronghold until Mr. Obama won it, just barely, in 2008. Republicans here say Mr. Romney isn’t likely to win Ohio without also winning Hamilton County.

So what do the numbers here show?

Early and absentee voting here among those classified as Democrats is up 7% over 2008, to 17,454 votes as of Friday. At the same time, it’s up double that among those classified as Republicans, to 21,182 votes.

But here’s the rub: Voters without clear party allegiance outnumber both Democrats and Republicans. The number of non-affiliateds casting early and absentee votes in Hamilton has jumped 13% since 2008, to 48,282.

Similar trends hold in many of the other big counties across the state. The mystery of who is really winning the early voting race depends in large part on who those voters are voting for—and that, no board of elections can say.

A number of polls of Ohio voters in recent weeks have shown that Mr. Obama leads by a wide margin among those who say they have already voted. …

[Ludovic]

If you vote in a partisan primary, then county officials identify you as a member of that party. The Republicans had a very competitive presidential primary earlier this year.

…and, game.

[elucidator]

A number of polls of Ohio voters in recent weeks have shown that Mr. Obama leads by a wide margin among those who say they have already voted. …

Well, that’s what they say. But they may be lying. Many thousands of Ohio voters voted for Bush, but when asked, said they voted for Kerry. I’d be ashamed to admit it too, I suppose, but still…

[adaher]

Actually, the big lie isn’t likely who they are voting for, but whether they voted. Pollsters are finding a much higher percentage of people claiming to have already voted than reported by the states.

That’s probably what happened with Kerry, people said they voted and just never got around to it.

[elucidator]

Well, there may well be lots of good reasons for disputing exit polls. But that isn’t one of them, as they are exit polls, people actually leaving the voting place. Exiting, as it were.

[MsWhatsit]

This is exactly the break the Romney campaign has been waiting for.

[DSeid]

@adaher

… Pollsters are finding a much higher percentage of people claiming to have already voted than reported by the states…

Mind my asking where you are getting this?

I’ve tried looking for some source and was left with figuring out some numbers based on the county featured in the WSJ link. Their numbers add up to about 87K votes already counted (and presumably some in the mail and not yet counted). RVs in Hamilton county last reported was 564K. That comes to about 15 to 16%. Pretty much in keeping with what the Reuters/Ipsos polling data reports:

Obama leads Romney 54 percent to 39 percent among voters who already have cast ballots, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling data compiled in recent weeks. The sample size of early voters is 960 people with a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

About 18 percent of registered voters already have cast ballots, the Reuters/Ipsos polling data showed. Around a quarter of minority voters - who tend to support Obama - and almost a fifth of white voters have cast ballots, the data showed.

That lead despite the fact that

Republicans, who were caught flat-footed by Obama’s strong performance in early voting in 2008, have put more emphasis on it this time around

so really should be doing quite a bit better than they did before.