Early voting hits record high
The numbers indicate that overall participation could be the highest in a century.
Reporting from Washington — For vast swaths of Americans, election day has already come and gone thanks to a record level of early voting -- a big transformation of the way Americans exercise their most fundamental right as citizens. In three swing states -- North Carolina, New Mexico and Colorado -- the number of voters who have already cast their ballots has reached more than 70% of the number who voted there in 2004.
That may represent the beginning of a tidal wave of voting participation that could match or break a record set a century ago, when two-thirds of eligible voters went to the polls for the 1908 presidential election.
The influx in many places seems to be favoring Obama, as Democratic early voters outnumber Republicans in all but one state that keeps track of party affiliation, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project at George Mason University.
Michael P. McDonald, director of the project, predicts that some 30% of all ballots this year will be cast before election day. That would be up from 20% in 2004 and from 7% in 1992.
"These early numbers are startling, far outpacing what would be expected at this stage in the election," said McDonald.
It remains to be seen whether the wave of early voters portends a big increase in final turnout figures. But analysts see signs that it will. The number of voters registered nationwide increased about 2.5% to include 73.5% of the eligible population -- the highest level at least since women won the right to vote in 1920, according to an estimate by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.
"The level of voter enthusiasm and excitement indicates that this is a 100-year storm of elections," said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore.
The early voting options offered in 32 states -- which allow people to vote by mail or in person before election day without offering any excuse -- may ease the crunch at polling places Tuesday. But the demand for early voting was so great that people in Georgia and Virginia had to wait for as long as five hours to cast their early ballots. Among the other measures of the demand:
-- In Georgia, the number of early voters has already tripled over the 2004 early tally. In Virginia, early voting doubled.
-- In North Carolina, the early voters seemed tilted in Obama's favor: 51% are Democrats and 26.1% are African Americans (even though only 21.5% of all registered voters are black).
