From a memo by RNC political director Rick Wiley:
In at least four key swing states in 2008, Obama won handily among early voters, allowing him to win those state without winning the actual Election Day vote. He will not have the same early vote lead this year because our Absentee Balloting operation is producing promising results. In Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada Republicans have requested more absentee ballots than Democrats. While we run programs in every battleground state, not all states track ballots by voter identification, so we can only measure our progress in certain ones.
As of Saturday, Republicans had requested 656,813 absentee ballots in Colorado, compared to Democrats’ 627,064, according to records from the Secretary of State. In North Carolina, more than 52% of all ballot requests have come from Republicans, whereas Democrats account for only 27% of requests and unaffiliated voters, 21%.
In Florida, 43.4% of absentee ballot requests came from Republicans, 39% from Democrats. Republicans have an even larger advantage in returned absentee ballots: 45.5% to 38%.
In Nevada, absentee ballot requests favor Republicans 43.9% to 39.2%, with some smaller GOP-leaning counties not reporting. We expect our advantage in Nevada therefore to be even larger.
Read the full memo about the GOP’s get out the vote effort here. It’s certainly been more aggressive than it was in 2008; in Florida, for instance, the RNC has made seven times the number of phone calls that were made in 2008.