We are beginning to get the first early voting statistics out of North Carolina, which started mailing absentee ballots on Friday, Sept. 7. Election officials report delivering 21,875 mail ballots as of Saturday, Sept. 8, and two ballots were accepted. Congratulations Daniel and Justin, you are the first two people to vote for president in the 2012 general election!
What do the number of ballot requests tell us so far?
It is difficult to make a true comparison to 2008 since the first day that election administrators mailed ballots in 2008 was on Monday, Sept. 15 and in 2012, it was earlier on Friday, Sept. 7. To make the most consistent comparison as possible, I generate statistics for the first date of mailing of ballots.
The number of absentee ballot applications is down by nearly half from 2008. In 2008, election officials had received 37,539 applications compared to 20,695 in 2012, or 45 percent fewer applications. The number of applications from registered Republicans is down more than Democrats, which are also down. The percentage of registered Republicans declined by 55 percent while the percentage of registered Democrats declined 35 percent. Thus registered Republicans composed 51 percent of the earliest absentee ballot applications in 2008 and 42 percent in 2012.
These numbers appear to confirm a report from Chapman University finding military absentee ballot applications are down from 2008. While news reports primarily discuss problems with the administration of elections, which are significant for overseas and military voters, they fail to consider that military personnel may have been particularly enthusiastic in 2008 to vote for veteran John McCain.
Still, this cannot be the whole story since the majority of requests are from civilians. There were only 3,949 military absentee ballot applications in 2008 and 2,127 in 2012. Whatever is going on is also affecting civilian voters. Pamela Mitchell, Acting Director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, notes that ballot applications are on par with 2004, the last time there was an uncontested nomination for the incumbent president's party. Perhaps this is the reason, or something else is happening.
It is also worth noting that eventually registered Democrats far outpaced registered Republicans in 2008, especially once North Carolina started in-person early voting. Absentee ballots were only 8.6 percent of all early votes cast in 2008.
The lesson, while these statistics are interesting, caution should be taken when making simple comparisons at different points in time across different elections.
Follow early voting statistics here and updates on Twitter: @ElectProject
UPDATE 9/12: The number of ballot requests has continues to increase, with an updated 2,360 reported on Monday (revised from 1,890) and a preliminary 2,129 on Tuesday. The number of absentee ballot requests is now 28,912.
I previously discussed above an apparent decline in the number of absentee ballot requests in comparison to 2008. Then, at the start date of mail balloting there were 37,539 absentee ballot requests. Now, at the start of mail balloting last Friday, the number was 20,695. As I caution, the start date for requests is not entirely comparable since mail balloting began over a week earlier in 2012 than in 2008 -- but the election was also two days later into November. This Saturday marks the same number of days from the election as when mail balloting began in 2008. If the rate of requests continues on the current pace, it may be that the number of requests will be on par with 2008, including for those among the military, which now stands at 3,003, compared to 2,127 last Friday and 3,949 for the start of mail balloting in 2008.