The Political Voices of Women

Will a Surge of Early Voting in Florida Affect the Outcome of Primary?  — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at Care2 Election Blog)

Even though I didn’t do the early voting thing here in Florida, roughly 750,000 other voters did. This could throw a real monkey wrench into the outcome of our primary. Talk about a pollster and pundit nightmare.

Now the question is – How will this early voting affect the results of the primary? Take Giuliani. When early voting began, he looked like a ‘shoe in’, but his performance in the Florida debate was less than impressive.

“Rudy’s people have aggressively worked the absentees, particularly in South Florida,” said Sally Bradshaw, a longtime Florida Republican operative who is running Mr. Romney’s campaign here. “It makes sense for them to do so. They knew Rudy was not strong in the early primary states and they needed people to vote for Rudy before the results from that state came on.” — Read full article at The New York Times

That’s exactly why I’m not really a fan of early voting – what if by election day you want to change your mind? I tend to make my mind up only shortly before election day. [Example: As of today, I am still somewhat undecided about who I will be voting for tomorrow.] But, even though it’s not right for me, I wouldn’t want to get rid of early voting, I like that it allows for more voter participation. And the extra bonus of confusing the pollsters, is kinda fun too.

Even though Giuliani has slipped badly in the polls, if his campaign was successful in getting out the early vote, he still has a chance here. And, the pollsters have had Hillary leading for the Democrats…But, Obama actually has had campaign ads running here (when no other Democrat has). Plus, with his momentum from South Carolina, who knows? Obama could still have a chance here on Tuesday.

So, it should be interesting to see how this all shakes out on Tuesday. Personally, I’m still mad about the whole “punishment” thing by the DNC over moving up our primary. And, I’m generally not happy with any of the three Democrats, because of their lack of desire to stand-up to the DNC. In a way, I don’t really look at my vote on Tuesday as a vote for a specific candidate, so much as a vote to show the DNC that Florida is relevant.