Number one, dems always vote early/absentee in Ohio. They had 14% more voters than us in 08 but only won the state by 5 points. If they only lead us by 5% in voters (not votes), using the crude measurement above, we should be ahead by 4 or 5. Right? However, many variables to consider: more dems will vote repub this year and indies favor us by some margin (conclusion above is based on no dems voting romney and no repubs voting Obama and indies splitting 50/50); the way you are labeled a dem or repub is at county level not state and based on you voting in a party primary (so some of the unaffiliated are dems/repubs but haven’t voted in a party - we still have to figure that out); large dem counties in 08 mailed ballot applications to all their voters, this year, the state mailed ballots apps to ALL registered voters throughout the state. So all these factors at play but the easiest thing to assess for me is go individual county by individual county and see the difference between 08 and 12. What a difference 4 years makes. Hope that helps.
Thanks for doing the legwork for all of us.
If absentee ballots represent 20% of the total and the dem requests are down 9 percentage points from 2008 you can’t simply subtract 9 points from Obama’s win with ALL ballots (ie 5 point win - 9 points = 4 point loss). Assuming everything besides absentee voting is equal the correct math would be (5 point win - (9 points x 20%) = 3.2 win).
Sorry if I misunderstood something in your post.
Thank you for all the info