Early Voting

Yesterday opened Ohio's unusual week-long window in which voters can register and cast absentee ballots at the same time. Hundreds arrived in steady streams, part of a first wave of people already voting across the country, five weeks before Election Day.

Given Ohio's pivotal role in presidential races, its one-stop registration and voting drew attention -- and legal challenges.

But nationally, early voting, by mail or in person, is becoming more common and is likely to account for one-third of all votes cast in the November elections, up from 14 percent in 2000, predicts Paul Gronke, a researcher with the Early Voting Information Center in Portland, Ore.

That projection tracks with growth that three other election analysts have noted, with the rate of early voting rising from 20 percent in 2004 to 25 percent in 2006. Experts and state election officials have followed the growth in early voting for more than a decade.  Read Article Here.

Tossup States, Swing States, and You

You've heard of most of the battleground states before. Ohio and Florida are the two most famous, making all of the other swing states jealous because they've had movies made about them. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico are also among the traditional swing states that have supported candidates from both parties in recent elections.

The number of battleground states is not fixed. Different news organizations have varying counts. NBC, CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Mark Ambinder, and Pollster.com, all see it slightly differently. The slight distinction among the different analysts is about which new states will be accorded the coveted "swing state" title and which traditional swing states should fall off the list. Indiana and North Carolina are new states flickering in the desirable "tossup" category, whereas Iowa, a state George W. Bush won in 2004, appears to be headed out of McCain's reach.

To determine the states that are truly competitive, we start with the states that historically have been close and then look at the current polls, which are now quite favorable for Obama. Statewide polls can be unreliable, though, because of small samples and crazy methodology, so analysts also look at other cues like party registration. If the party that is traditionally the underdog is signing up lots of new voters—perhaps enough to make up for the 2004 margin—it might hint that the state is really in play. In traditionally red Colorado, for example, Democrats have seen the number of registered voters grow. It's also worth checking who or what else is on the ballot: Anti-union initiatives in Colorado might help McCain, while popular candidates like Mark Warner, who is running for Senate in Virginia, might help Obama.  Read Article Here.

Miami Crew Better go to this

The National and The Breeders Rock Free Concert for Obama

Race, Politics and Polls in Ohio

A striking feature of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll, which was released Friday, was that while McCain is winning the support of 90 percent of Republican voters, Obama is only picking up 82 percent of the Democrats. These differing levels of party loyalty -- which might (note the conditional tense) be attributed to Palin for the Republicans and Obama's African-American heritage on the Democratic side -- partly explain why McCain leads 48 to 44 percent in the survey. (A Quinnipiac University poll gave Obama a 49-44 edge in Ohio over McCain, which underscores why slavishly following the gyrating surveys can be an exercise in frustration.)

But polls, which tend to put the undecided vote in single digits, may understate the volatility of the race. In the Ohio Poll, 19 percent of the state's voters said that they could change their minds before Election Day and another 4 percent were undecided. "I think voters know less at this point about Obama than they do about McCain," said Eric Rademacher, the co-director of the Ohio Poll. "The people who were saying that they could change their minds are those who normally don't pay attention to politics until after the convention."  Read Article Here.

Ohio is important to me right now.  Partially because everyday I am comparing BU to Miami, but also because Ohio will decide the winner of this election.  It has 20 electoral points and is the reason why Kerry lost the election.  The article makes me feel a little more optimistic about Obama's chances, but only a little.