One-third of ballots will be cast before Election Day

It's true that Election Day is still five weeks away -- but in some races, pivotal balloting is already taking place. Measures to increase early voting in the United States have worked so well that this year, at least one-third of all general election ballots will be cast before Nov. 2, the New York Times reports.

That's the main reason that President Obama, in his barnstorming campaign to rouse the Democratic base, has set out this week to rally voters in key early-voting states. As he addresses a youth-vote rally Tuesday in Madison, Wis., Democratic organizers are coordinating a series of "Early Riser, Early Voters" rallies in states such as Iowa, where balloting began last week. The president is also scheduled to headline a rally in Ohio next month, where early voting helped nudge the state into the Democratic column in 2008.

"There is now much more consideration to making sure you have your opponent fully defined before ballots go out in October," GOP strategist Rob Stutzman told the Times. Stutzman is currently advising Meg Whitman, the Republican nominee for California governor.

In 2008, approximately 39.7 million votes -- or 30 percent -- were cast early, according to Michael McDonald of George Mason University's United States Election Project. That was a significant increase over 2004, when just 20 percent of the election's ballots were cast early.

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The Obama push stems in part from Democrats' 2008 success in recruiting early voters for Obama. In Ohio, GOP presidential nominee John McCain won a majority of ballots cast on Election Day, but as the Times notes, Obama was able to pick up the crucial battleground state thanks to his edge in early voter support.

Jason Mauk, executive director of the Ohio Republican Party, told the Times he is focusing on early voting for the first time this year.

Absentee voting is already underway in many states, meaning that some voters will cast ballots even before many candidates air their first ads.

So who are these all-important early voters?

According to Paul Gronke and Daniel Krantz Toffey, both political scientists at Reed College, early voters tend to be "older, better educated, and more cognitively engaged in the campaign and in politics," according to their 2008 paper for the Journal of Social Issues.

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Gronke's Early Voting Information Center at Reed notes that the increase in early balloting also helps account for the ungodly length of contemporary political campaigns, since it forces candidates to compete for the support of these voters much earlier in the election cycle. And if there's one universal truth about political contests, it's that candidates will go to any length -- or to any starting point on the calendar -- to bank ballot-box support.

(Photo: AP/Charlie Neibergall)

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