Is this a sign that Rudy Giuliani’s targeting of early voters is working? Or is it just that Floridians like the ease of voting early?

Nearly 7 percent of Florida’s 10-million registered voters have already cast their ballots for Tuesday’s election, suggesting the vote may buck the recent trend of lackluster turnout. Nearly 700,000 voters had voted early or returned absentee ballots as of Thursday. Just 786,000 voted in the uncontested 2004 presidential primary. Republicans are outpacing Democrats in requesting and returning absentees – an area where the GOP historically has held an advantage in Florida. Democrats’ absentee returns are proportionally higher than in past elections, and they hold a slight lead in early voting despite the statewide boycott by their party’s presidential hopefuls. So far 325,161 Republicans have cast early or absentee votes, compared to 295,932 Democrats.

UPDATE: An old Florida hand tells me:

I lived and worked in journalism in Florida for 14 years, and it was always very difficult to pinpoint any trends from how much early and absentee voting was going on. Despite the warmth and sunshine, people just liked being able to not have to go to the polls. Perhaps it was a function of the age of the population. Or, on the east coast and in the Orlando area, dealing with the traffic. But there was always a lot of it, and the outcomes of the elections were always wildly disparate, so trying to define trends from it is next to impossible, in my experience.