Romney currently leads Obama 52% to 45% among voters who say they have already cast their ballots. However, that
is comparable to Romney's 51% to 46% lead among all likely voters in Gallup's Oct. 22-28 tracking polling. At the same time, the race is tied at 49% among those who have not yet voted but still intend to vote early, suggesting these voters could cause the race to tighten. However, Romney leads 51% to 45% among the much larger group of voters who plan to vote on Election Day, Nov. 6.
... For example, here's what we know about Ohio's early voting numbers,
thus far:
But here is what we do know:
220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early in Ohio compared with 2008. And 30,000 more Republicans have cast their ballots compared with four years ago.
That is a 250,000-vote net increase for a state Obama won by 260,000 votes in 2008.
Something else in this Gallup survey also helps shed some light on what we're seeing in these sometimes counter-intuitive state polls. As the headline states, Gallup is showing that only 15% of the public has already voted. Moreover, they've broken down early voting by region and show that in the Midwest only 13% of voters have already voted. And yet, many polls in places like Ohio show a much higher percentage of early voters, some as high as 30%, which you can bet skews the data. In other words, those polls can't be correct.
Other than the fact that this is Gallup, another reason to embrace this poll is due to its very large sample size of 3,312 registered voters.
GALLUP: Romney Up 52-45% Among Early Voters
