Monday, September 22, 2008

Early Voting Favors McCain?

Early voting began today in states such as Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia and, according to the USA Today, "The campaigns of Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are already focused on getting voters to the polls."

I think that, based on some of our class discussions, early voting seems to favor the McCain-Palin ticket. We have discussed the impact, or lack, of impact that a vice presidential candidate has on the overall outcome of the election once November comes, however we have never discussed the impact that these candidates have on early voters. Based on the high level of excitement that continues to surround the McCain campaign because of Governor Palin (which we assume will die down when it's time to pull the lever in November), it seems that people are more likely to vote on emotion at this time of year then they are in November (we will discuss the effect that emotion has in today's lecture, which seems to be little to non).

NOTE: I do not know any of this for sure and I have no evidence (yet) to support my claims, these are my own predictions based on our discussions.

3 comments:

Mordy said...

That sounds reasonable, except I recently saw this:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/09/18/state-of-the-race-is-mccain-in-trouble.aspx

Which suggests that Palin will not be a factor in helping the McCain ticket. In early voting or otherwise.

Steven P said...

What will be interesting is that as absenetee ballots are sent out, what "new information" will begin to be released about the opposing side in a last ditch effort to win over voters.

Cranky Doc said...

Absentee ballots, I've read, will be more widely used in this election than in any in the past -- I've seen estimates as high as 1/3 of all votes cast before election day. Time is short to sway these voters. What might that do to campaign dynamics, I wonder?"