2008 Early Voting Statistics

Last updated: Nov. 4, 2008

For those who want poll results for early voters, you can check out this handy compilation of polls with breakdowns of early voters. I would clarify that this blogger calls these surveys "exit polls" when in fact they are not. They are simply pre-election polls conducted by various polling organizations that have large enough samples of early voters to report their support for candidates. There will be official exit poll phone surveys of early voters released Tuesday evening when the polls close.

Beware of election night results released at poll closing, as they may be misleading. Many states and localities quickly report results for their early voters. The reporting method varies widely among states. If these surveys are correct that Obama supporters are voting early at higher rates than McCain supporters, these early election results may give a false impression of what the actual election result will be once all votes are counted.

IMPORTANT PROGRAMMING NOTE

I am traveling Saturday morning to the undisclosed location where the media consortium's exit polls are run. I will continue to update these numbers, although the reports may be delayed. Please do not ask me for exit poll results since 1) I will be in the quarantine room and have no access to the outside world and 2) even if I could, I would not share the information with my wife, much less a stranger from the internet. I am participating in a on-line Washington Post chat on Monday at 2pm and would welcome your questions. Muchas gracias to Rachel Maddow who was kind to invite me as a guest on her radio and television shows. I don't think I did a good enough job of talking her down, so I hope she doesn't jump before Tuesday. If you can't get enough of me from there, you can watch this CNN video clip on early voting.

And we now resume our regular programming where we are approaching the finish line...

Tens of millions of people have already cast their ballot for the 2008 presidential election. By early vote, I mean any vote cast prior to Election Day, be it by absentee ballot or in-person at a central election administration office or special satellite polling location. A list of state laws regarding early voting can be found at the Early Vote Center. I'm posting links and some statistics to early voting here. It is difficult to keep up with these statistics, and I will do my best to keep them current. For those itching to get the latest statistics, I have posted links to the early vote statistics and I've created an Excel spreadsheet to aid data entry.

Where available, I provide additional statistics such as early voters by party, race, gender and age. You can compare these demographic characteristics of the 2008 early vote electorate to the 2004 electorate with this profile of the 2004 electorate drawn from the 2004 Current Population Survey. The Current Population Survey does not ask party identification. Something to consider as one digests these early vote statistics is that the media consortium's 2004 exit poll conducted supplemental phone surveys of early voters in selected states with high proportions of early voters. These surveys found that early voters were more Republican than in-person Election Day voters in all states except Iowa.

I estimate the magnitude of the early vote by dividing the 2008 early vote total by the total number of ballots cast in the 2004 general election. You can compare this to the state-level percentage of early votes cast in the 2004 election compiled by the Associated Press. For some localities where I have county reports only, I provide 2004 statistics drawn from official election websites. Keep in mind that in previous elections, the number of early votes typically ramps up as the early vote deadline approaches. Early voting appears to be on track to exceed the 2004 levels. Indeed, the number of early votes cast in Georgia and North Carolina have already surpassed their 2004 numbers. The question remains if this means a greater share of the 2008 vote will be cast early, if turnout will be up overall, or - as I suspect - a combination of these two factors are in play.

I've written up my initial thoughts in this (already dated) Brookings Insitution op-ed.

Read more coverage of this website on CNN, Politico, Bloomberg, PBS, LA Times...

A CNN website is now providing early voting statistics, too. What are the differences? They seem to have greater coverage at the state level while I have individual county level data. Their data is a little more out of date. Still, if you're coming here, you'll want to check it out.

To clear up some questions that I have had about these statistics:

• The breakdowns of early voters are by party registration, not vote for president. I want to stress this again, particularly for the foreign readers who are not familar with partisan registration: we do not know who these people voted for; election results for early voters are (mostly) tabulated on election day. However, there are some pretty strong clues as to who these people voted for in the party registration statistics that favor Democrats in most states and polls that are now reporting Obama is performing strong among early voters, such as this Associated Press poll (there are many polls, if you want to see them all, visit a website like Pollster.com). A further point about these polls is that they are normal public opinion polls, they are not exit polls. We simply have a large enough sample of early voters in some states in these pre-election polls to begin to get reliable estimates of who these early voters support.
• I count only mail-in absentee ballots returned to an election office. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported in 2004 that about 90% of all requested ballots were returned.
• I do not provide the total number of registered voters, mainly due to deadwood and purging issues. I discuss some of the difficulties of voter registration as a metric of turnout here and my research - what I am best known for in the academic community - is the construction of turnout rates for those eligible to vote.
• I am past the point where I can respond to most e-mails. I appreciate people who point out new data sources. For those who want something more, this is pretty much what you're going to get. I have a day job as a professor and I am only one person. I'm having difficulty just keeping up with the statistics I can provide.
• To the many who express thanks for what I do, I appreciate your sentiments even if I do not have time to personally answer your e-mail.

Early Vote 2008.xls

Early Voting Statistics

^Note that as of 10/23 I am adding absentee ballots returned to the Florida number provided to me by a Florida Political Action Committee. Citizens like myself can access the early voting reports, but not the absentee ballot reports. Previous reports were for in-person early voting only. The numbers here are for individual reports made by Florida counties to the state Elections Division. I have been told under Florida law the counties must provide the counts for the previous day by noon of the current day. I will try to keep these numbers current, but this will be difficult since the reporting is varied and these reports must be individually downloaded.
#Clark County and Washoe County may report more current early voting numbers on their county website than the state website. I report the most current numbers separately and add in these numbers to the state total.
*Ohio provides a field for "party" on their absentee reports. Understand that this is not party registration, per ce, rather it is an indicator if a person voted in a party primary and took a party loyalty oath. For this reason, I am not reporting party statistics for Ohio.