Gallup: Romney Up 52-45 Among Early Voters;
Obama Down 22 Points Compared to 2008 Edge

Despite a lot of jazz about Obama winning the early vote, Gallup finds Romney has a 7 point lead.

In 2008, Obama was way ahead with early voting, up 55-40 over McCain. Interestingly, Obama was only up 3 points with people actually voting on Election Day itself.

It maybe gets a little better. I've mentioned before that the Romney campaign is crowing that Obama is cannibalizing his high-propensity voters -- they're likely to vote anyway, whether early or on election day, but the Obama's team is putting effort into getting them to vote early.

It really doesn't matter all that much when you're talking about a high propensity voter. Sure, you'd rather have the vote in the bank, but a high propensity voter is going to vote 92% of the time anyway (I just made that specific number up).

Romney, meanwhile, is spending more time focusing on getting sporadic voters to vote early. And these are voters who probably would not vote if not for all the hand-holding and encouragement.

In Ohio and Iowa, Obama has gotten 43% of its best voters to vote early; Romney has only gotten about 27% of its best voters to vote early.

I guess there may be some spin here from Camp Romney -- why not get these voters to vote early, too? -- but these early vote tallies are deceptive because Obama's not really "getting out the vote" by getting voters who would vote anyway to vote sooner rather than later. It makes his early vote tallies look nice and fat, but come election day, it doesn't matter when people voted, just that they did vote.

Obama's early vote tallies don't indicate a rush of new Obama voters; it's just the ones he already had, and who have already been counted in his Coalition of 47%, preferring to vote earlier rather than later.

posted by Ace at 10:18 AM

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