Below I noted that the early voters in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, Ohio (which includes Cleveland), are behind where they were on this day in 2008 — 30,177, compared to 34,527 four years ago. (Some of that is due to Sandy-related bad weather, but the slowdown actually began before the storm.)
A Campaign Spot reader has been watching the early vote in Hamilton County, Ohio, the county that includes Cincinnati. It’s a bit less heavily Democratic; Obama won there, 52 percent to 47 percent, in 2008. But it is the third-most populous county in Ohio.
This reader notes that overall, early votes are 7 percent behind the same point in 2008. What’s more, they have cross-checked the early voters with those who voted in the state’s Republican primary — and determined that non-Republican primary voters are now down 14 percent from the level of four years ago.
As in Cuyahoga County, the early vote was on par with the 2008 rate until about October 25 or so. So if one wanted to conclude that the Obama campaign’s get-out-the-vote-early efforts were merely picking the lowest-hanging fruit of the most loyal and motivated Democrats, and that they’re running out of those voters . . . well, the early voting rate in two of Ohio’s three most populous counties would seem to strengthen that argument.