Early Voting Favors Obama In Bush States

In the key arena of early voting and requests for absentee ballots, Obama leads McCain in four states that went for Bush: Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia. McCain has the lead in Florida, with 220,000 more Republicans requesting absentee ballots than Dems.

By Greg Sargent - October 20, 2008, 10:28AM

The Associated Press has a good rundown on early voting and requests for absentee balloting in various key battlegrounds:

* Dems lead in Iowa, with Dems asking for roughly 60,000 more ballots than Repubicans as of last Wednesday.

* Dems lead in Ohio, with about 35,000 more Dems requesting absentee ballots than Republicans as of last week.

* Dems lead in North Carolina early voting, with some 62% of the more than 200,000 who voted last Thursday and Friday being registered Democrats, while only 22% were registered Republicans.

* In Georgia, many of the more than 540,000 ballots that were cast as of Wednesday were in Dem strongholds of metropolitan Atlanta, and blacks accounted for 37% of them.

* In Florida, GOPers hold an edge in absentee balloting, with 220,000 more Republicans requesting absentee ballots than Dems.

All of those states went for Bush in 2004, and if McCain doesn't win them all the map becomes very difficult for him.