I think that North Carolina and Georgia are the fascinating early voting stories of this election. Both are swing states (somewhat unexpectedly); both have large minority populations which are bucking past trends; and both have exhibited astronomical levels of early turnout.

North Carolina has reached the end of its “onestop” in-person voting period. We still don’t have the returns for today (expected to be high, with extended opening hours at many locations), and there are undoubtedly many absentee ballots currently in the mail system. All the same, early turnout has (at least) doubled from the last presidential election, to 2.35 million ballots cast

As of late Friday evening, the early turnout from this election was 66% of the total turnout from 2004. Again, we have the daily and cumulative ballot returns. On the right-hand graph, the 2004 partisan early voting totals are indicated by dashed lines.

It’s important to account for the different levels of party registration in the state (the Democrats have significantly more registered voters), so I’ve also generated a graph (left, below) that shows ballot returns as a percentage of each party’s registered voters. The Democrats still hold a commanding lead in turnout. On the right, all this information combined into one: ballot returns as a percentage of registered voters, for both 2004 and 2008. In 2004, the Democrats and Republicans were incredibly close by this metric.

A quick update from Maine, where absentee ballot levels are roughly equal to those of 2004. The graph on the left shows the number of ballots returned by party affiliation, and indicates a Democratic trend.

Democrats have the edge in voter registration in the state, however, so the graph on the right shows the same data as a percentage of each party’s active registered voters. This evens things out a little—around 23% of registered Democrats have voted, compared to 18% of Republicans. The low percentage of unaffiliated voters (12%) is interesting, but broadly in line with past experience: early voters tend to be more committed partisans.

As you can imagine, over the past few days we’ve fielded a vast (for our small staff) number of questions about early voting, its history, and so on. One of the questions that comes up repeatedly is: how does early voting help political parties?

On the face of it, it’s a reasonable question. Paul Gronke likes to talk about the voting electorate as an apple pie. If you remove a slice of early voters, then there are that many fewer voters on Election Day. If there’s a certain slice of the electorate that is going to vote—and early voters do tend to be more committed partisans—why would the parties care when they did so?

Indeed, there are many reasons why campaigns might dislike early voting. It forces them to run a longer, more sustained endgame. Days like the Friday and Monday before Election Day become major events in their own right, requiring sustained advertising spend. Studies have not found clear turnout increases from early voting systems. And, indeed, wide dissemination of the results might induce complacency for leaders in the early vote (I suspect this is going to garner much attention in the post-election discussion). If nothing else, the old system was familiar: elected officials can reasonably be expected to be suspicious of change to a system they know well.

The first question also prompts a corollary: why have election commentators made so much of the high Democratic turnout? If Democrats are particularly enthused and excited by this election, then they might well be expected to get out and cast their votes as soon as possible. But these voters were going to turn out anyway, presumably. What does early voting add to this equation?

In part, the answer lies in targeted canvassing. Most of the states provide—with varying levels of restriction—detailed breakdowns of early voters. And I don’t mean just broad partisan or demographic trends, but individual-level voter information (typically at least name and address). If the data aren’t contained within the returns themselves, a list of voter identification numbers usually is, and this list can be compared to voter registers to obtain detailed information. North Carolina—a state we’ve been following closely—makes such data freely available on its website. Florida, too, provides extensive information about early in-person voters (though absentee data are restricted by law to registered parties).

For candidates, this is a dream come true; it turns out that one ‘in the bank’ is more valuable than it would initially seem. By turning out committed partisans early, campaigns can check them off, and then focus their get-out-the-vote efforts in the last few days on marginal and undecided voters. Campaigns have a vast machinery in place on the ground in many states, but their resources and time are still limited. Early voting allows them, essentially, to stop wasting precious time on those who have voted.

This aspect of early voting is crucial to understanding why the results so far give Barack Obama’s campaign a significant advantage. It’s not necessarily because we think the partisan ratios are a harbinger of things to come. Certainly, we don’t anticipate a 70%-30% victory (or insert your favorite exuberant prediction here). This is not Election Day writ-large, and it would be quite dangerous to make forecasts from early voting returns. That said, a large chunk of the Democratic base has now turned out in swing states like Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina—and the same cannot be said for Republicans. While the McCain campaign will be forced to spend a large part of the last few days ensuring that its base turns out in sufficient numbers, the Obama team will be able to focus its efforts on persuading and turning out valuable swing voters.

I should be clear: we’re a non-partisan academic research center, and we try to study and present all interesting aspects of early voting, regardless of the party angle. All the same, it’s very hard to spin the numbers we are seeing so far in any way that doesn’t tell a bad story for John McCain.

A quick Georgia update. The state has had huge turnout for its early in-person (“advance”) voting this year. Despite the voting period being relatively short (just one week) nearly 1.4 million in-person votes have been cast—that’s 25% of registered voters. It’s also a 100% increase on last year, when just 670,000 voters cast their ballots early.

Looking at the racial breakdown, the African-American turnout that we noted earlier in the week remains quite strong. The graph on the left shows both registered voters and ballots cast by race. Black turnout is relatively high, though it’s hard to see from this chart, so the graph on the right displays turnout as a percentage of registered voters in three racial groupings.