Early Voting Update, October 30

Wow, only five days left to the election.

Despite pundit discussion of a "narrowing" of polls, the fact is that Obama leads in every national poll, and has for several weeks now. He also leads in most battleground states--indeed, he's turned new states into battlegrounds.

Furthermore, between 15-20% of Americans have already voted, and Obama leads among those voters.

We've collected data from polls that include breakdowns of early voters' preferences--about 50 of them so far--in one place HERE.

This morning we've updated our comprehensive early voting compilation with the following: national poll data from an ABC-Wash. Post showing Obama leading 59%-40% among early voters. We've also updated our demographic data on early voters from Georgia, Louisiana and North Carolina. In North Carolina, where early voting already accounts for more than 50% the number of voters who cast ballots in 2004, the demographic data is showing some regression to the mean, i.e., the outsize percentages of Democrats and African-American voters are slowly declining--but are still quite high.

We expect that by day's end there will be some additional data, and we'll do another update then.