Voters in 23 States Rush to Beat the Rush
"If they want something to go down, it's going to happen," said Tia Robinson, a black claims adjuster voting Friday in Jacksonville. On the positive side, she added, "It felt good drawing my circle around the name I voted for."
There are no statewide totals of early voters, and votes will not be counted until polls close on Election Day. But some counties have made numbers available, and Democrats appear to be considerably outstripping Republicans in turnout -- significantly, in the belt of counties across the state's midsection, from St. Petersburg to Orlando, the prime battleground for swing voters.
In Orange County, home to Orlando with a 5 percent Democratic edge in registration, 50,839 early votes had been cast by Friday morning -- 48 percent of them Democrats and 33 percent Republicans. In Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, where Republicans have a slight edge in registration, Democrats have a slight edge in early voters. In heavily Democratic Broward County, almost 130,000 votes were cast, with no party breakdown; and in Miami-Dade, almost 180,000.
Mindy Tucker Fletcher, a GOP strategist, said the Democratic advantage in early voters is irrelevant because Republicans have a bigger advantage in absentee ballots.
But Colleen Murphy, a Republican official in Orange County, posted an alarmist message on the party's Web site about the intensity and numbers of Democrats casting early ballots there.
"I want to tell you, it's been a culture shock," she wrote. "If you don't get yourselves out of your routines and your comfort zones and do what is necessary to support the president between now and November 2, I'm afraid we're all in for a little culture shock that will last beyond the next four years."
Matt Miller, Florida spokesman for the Kerry campaign, confirmed that early voting has been the chief priority of the Democratic campaign for the past several weeks. Independent "527" groups such as America Coming Together have been canvassing Democratic voters since the spring, and for weeks have urged them to cast early ballots for Kerry.
Knocking on doors in the upscale Pebble Creek neighborhood in northern Hillsborough County, two ACT canvassers found Wednesday that well over half their target audience had voted. One woman answered her door wearing an "I voted early" sticker, flashed a thumbs-up and said, simply, "Yes!"
Republicans began an intensive canvass Thursday night, with swarms of volunteers deployed to GOP precincts. Matt Strength, who chairs the University of South Florida's College Republican chapter, knocked on more than two dozen doors in a precinct that voted 68 percent for Bush in 2000 and where the GOP hopes to get 72 percent this year. Only four voters were home, and all promised to vote, but none had voted early. "I went three times and the lines were too long," one woman said.
Susan McManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida, said one reason for the early voting is people's exhaustion from political ads, canvassing and visits from Bush, Kerry, their running mates, spouses, children and celebrity friends.
"They're worn down, and many of them just want to bring it to closure," she said.
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