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2004 US Presidential Election
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October 23, 2004
Early Voting | Early Voting Turnout - Arkansas

Early voting in the state of Arkansas, which began on Moday, October 18, is being greeted with extremely heavy turnout. I visited the Washington County Clerk’s office earlier today to cast my own votes, and was able to spend a few minutes with County Clerk Karen Combs Pritchard.

Ms. Pritchard told me that the numbers of voters taking advantage of early voting had come as a welcome surprise to her office. Throughout the week, they have averaged over 900 voters per day. The turnout today was especially brisk. The office was only open for three hours and they processed more than 300 people in the first hour. I arrived approximately ten minutes before closing and they had exceeded 500 people. In all, they have served more than 5,000 voters this week. That’s just under 9% of the total population in the community they serve.

Other communities around the state are also experiencing heavy turnout, with Pulaski County (Little Rock) estimating more than 2,000 voters per day this week.

Nationally, The Day newspaper in New London, CT, is reporting more than 1.3 million early voters just in eight swing states, including around 10% of registered voters in Nevada and New Mexico.

More on the Arkansas turnout can be found here and here.



Posted by Matthew at October 23, 2004 06:17 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Seems to me that this early voting could be something of a headache for exit pollsters. I can’t imagine that they are canvassing these early voters in the way they will voters on election day. If the early voters are not a representative group, the exit polling projections could be seriously skewed. If so, we could see another debacle like 2000 with the networks calling states for Candidate A, only to learn later that he actually lost the state.

Posted by: rdelephant [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 24, 2004 10:35 AM

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