An analysis of Ohio, all these public numbers/statistics so far are based off absentee ballots which don't include party so they're just going by county history of who tends to pick whom. This weekend is when the real fun will begin as it's in-person voting time
Chris Wyant, Clinton's Ohio campaign director, in an interview chalked up some of Clinton's early voting under-performance to the elimination of the so-called Golden Week, meaning that Ohio voters have had seven fewer days to vote this year than they did in 2012. He pointed out that Democratic counties actually are casting more ballots per day than they did four years ago.
"If you look at early voting by mail, we're outpacing in the number of ballots that have been cast [compared to 2012], and feel really good about where we are from a statewide perspective, as far as our voters deciding that early voting is a good decision for them," Wyant said.
He also said the Clinton campaign expects to make up ground this weekend, when Boards of Election across the state will open their doors for in-person early voting for the first time. There will be a second round of weekend, in-person voting the following week, the weekend before Election Day on Nov. 8.
In 2012, Cuyahoga County voters cast 25 percent more votes than the state average during in-person weekend voting sessions, Wyant said. Some of the reason for that includes "Souls to the Polls" — the name for the organized transporting of African-American voters to the Board of Elections straight after Sunday church services — as well the increased time people have to wait in line to vote at busy urban election centers on weekends when they don't have to go to work that day.
"I think going into this first weekend of [in-person] voting, you'll see those numbers spike in a way that's really encouraging," Wyant said. "And that's just going to be kind of a preview to the second weekend, which I think will be even higher turnout. So I think we'll look back at this in a couple weeks, and we'll realize that more Ohioans have voted early than ever have before."
Asked about the early-voting numbers, Bob Paduchik, Trump's state campaign director, issued a statement that alluded to Clinton's substantially more robust professional campaign operation in Ohio.
"When it matters the most in getting voters to the polls, Hillary Clinton's legions of paid staff cannot match Mr. Trump's grassroots movement," Paduchik said. "This massive enthusiasm gap is reflected in early and absentee voting returns, which show that Hillary Clinton's low-energy campaign to preserve the status quo in Washington isn't motivating regular Ohioans to actually get out and vote."
But Wyant suggested that some of the peculiarities of Trump's candidacy might dampen his performance in historically Republican counties showing an increase in ballot requests, including Delaware County in suburban Columbus, where the Clinton campaign has targeted GOP-leaning female voters repelled by Trump's candidacy.
"Just reading into a traditional blue and a traditional red counties misses some of what's ultimately important, which is what the voters are doing in these counties," he said.
Although Trump badly lags Clinton in most national polls and those in other swing states, public polls suggest the race in Ohio is a toss-up. The most recent polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics show Trump leading Clinton in Ohio by an average of 1.1 percentage points.
Obama won Ohio by about 3 percentage points in 2012.
http://www.cleveland.com/politics/in..._ohio_sug.html
