First National Snapshots of Early Voting: Advantage Obama

We now have our first national snapshots of how the early voting is going.

The Harris interactive poll, conducted Oct. 20-27, found that 12% of its sample had already voted. (This comports with other data: GMU Professor MacDonald estimates on his quite useful blog that we're up to 13.4% nationally; an ABC/Wash. Post poll from 10/25-10/28 had 11% of its sample reporting they had voted already; and a Diageo/Hotline poll from 10/25-10/28 had 17% of its sample already voting.)

Of the early voters in the Harris poll, Obama led by 51%-42%.

Gallup has also reported on early voters. In its sample, as of Oct. 28, Gallup found that 18% had already voted, and they went for Obama by 53%-43%. Note: in the Gallup poll, this does not mean early voters are disproportionately voting for Obama, because the margin was about the same for those who said they still planned to vote.

The other national polls did not report who the early voters in their samples actually voted for.

For complete results of early voting information from more than 45 polls, covering most of the battleground states, click HERE.