Ohio New Congressional District 3 (Columbus); Interesting facts about absentee ballot requests

Franklin county/DKos ^ | 9/26/12 | me

[Ravi]

above

[Ravi]

The old congressional district 3 in Ohio as drawn in 2008 was won by McCain 51 to Obama 47. It was redrawn in 2010 redistricting basically cover the city of Columbus. In the newly redrawn 3rd, Obama would have cleaned McCain's clock, 67 to 31. H/T Dkos there-ugghh. Anyway, so this is the newly redrawn 3rd that we are dealing with. A very democratic friendly district indeed. Let's play along.

Onward to absentee ballot requests as of today. Thus far, about 11,250 requests have come from dems. About 9700 requests have come from Repubs and about another 120 from libertarians and apparently 1 constitionalist (perhaps some freeper). Obama blew McCain away in this newly redrawn district in 2008. Now he barely leads with absentee ballot requests (11,200 to 9700). Again this assumes all dems vote Obama and all repubs vote Romney. Add in another 33,000 absentee ballot requests from unaffiliated voters and I don't think the Obama campaign would be happy with these numbers. Just something else to ponder tonight.

And most importantly to me, these 33,000 unaffiliated voters have already requested ballots so their mind is made up. My gut tells me these are people that want to vote Obama out and not keep him in but I could be wrong here.

[Ravi]

ping

[ncalburt]

Since this is good news the concerned ones aka trolls have not appeared ?
Go figure ?

[Ravi]

Yeah, the polls are off. Hard data, even if early in this election cycle, is very useful.

[plushaye]

Drilling down brings more good news about Ohio absentee voting. The trend is our friend!

Could you please ping me when you post. I like to follow these numbers from Ohio. Thanks.

[Ravi]

will do

[snarkytart]

Thanks for posting. This did lift my spirit. :)

[1010RD]

Add me to your OH ping list as well.

[LS]

Again, not really one sliver of good news in OH for Obama, and nothing remotely close to the polls.

BTW, I hope you guys know that (ahem) a certain someone is getting this research in front of a person who put it in front of Rush, Hannity, Levin, and last night I sent a summary with key counties to Michael Barone, who sent me a one-word response: "interesting".

I'm telling you all this because every % and every piece of data we post has to be dead reliable---as it has been so far.

We now have a chance to do what Freepers have always done, be cutting edge with research and analysis and do what the government-controlled media won't.

[Brad from Tennessee]

As Rush said, why would Obama be so focused on Ohio if he is 10 points ahead there?

[SharpRightTurn]

Excellent work by both of you.

I, too, would appreciate a heads-up on any new developments from Oiho (isn’t that the Zero spelling?).

[Ravi]

Ya know, it’s a little unsettling that we are able to figure this out with a few computer clicks and the big boys can’t or won’t yet. Maybe they’re all aware of the data and wanted to wait awhile before exploring/commenting on it. I don’t know why we’re not pointing out this data more aggressively. But that all starts here.

[LS]

WaPo had one little article on this. I think there was a reference in Dickie Morris's piece, but apparently he had not seen the actual data.

Not to beat our own drum, but heck Freepers did the same thing with the Dan Rather memo and three or four other things we broke. . . and who noticed them before we demanded they take notice?

[LS]

Say you're right and the 33,000 Is are mostly Obama voters: where does that put the total % compared to 08? You said the Obama people would not be happy. In 08, Obama had a 21% lead in Franklin. I gather the numbers are now closer to 30, even if we give him every single I vote?

So under the best of all possible worlds for Obama, he's down 3% in Franklin?

[LS]

I misread your conclusion line-—even better. If you are right, and we add the 33,000 (or most of them) to the R column, this is a blowout in Franklin County for Romney-—almost 2:1. But if all 33,000 go for Zero, he’s still behind his 08 numbers, right?

[Ravi]

And this isn’t even for the entire Franklin county. This is just the redrawn district 3 which is part of Franklin county that is heavily democratic (Columbus). Had this district existed in 2008, Obama would have beat McCain by 36 points (67 to 31). I was trying to find raw totals if this district excisted but DKOs only had percentages.

[plushaye]

“Not to beat our own drum, but heck Freepers did the same thing with the Dan Rather memo and three or four other things we broke. . . and who noticed them before we demanded they take notice? “

I was on FR when Rathergate broke and it was the most amazing thing to watch it unfold. I sat back and watched all the combined knowledge of FReepers about 1960’s old typewriters and word processing software end up disgracing a liberal reporting icon who was desperate to prevent the re-election of President Bush. I have had huge respect for FReepers since then.

[scrabblehack]

I hate to burst your bubble but I don’t think your results mean much. I checked the actual registration for the new District 3 and it is this:

4 Constitution (25% turnout already)
833 Libertarian (14% turnout already)
41117 Republican (23.6% turnout already)
43008 Democrat (26% turnout already)
376539 Unaffiliated (8.8% turnout already)
1 Socialist
290 Green

I assume the Socialist and Greens were thrown in with the Non-Partisans.

It appears that the Nonpartisans side with the Democrats in this district.

[scrabblehack]

It does surprise me though that unaffiliated registration is as high as it is.

[plushaye]

A Blooomberg article from July 9 2012 called “Independent voter surge cuts Democrats’ swing state edge” says: “Independent voters are growing in numbers at the expense of Democrats in battleground states most likely to determine this year’s presidential election, a Bloomberg News analysis shows.”

Independents grew by 443,000 in CO,FL,IA,NV,NH,NC. Dems dropped 480,000 and Reps added 38,000. Ohio stats aren’t mentioned but it’s not inconceivable that they could show a similar pattern, that is, independents “unaffiliated” have fled the Democrats. They obviously aren’t lock-step with the Democrats anymore. They are now the sought-after indies that history shows split for the challenger time and again.