Florida Democrats now have a 660,000 edge in voter registration over Republicans.

[seafan]

This is jump-up-and-down good news!


McCain's Early Lead in Florida Evaporates


By ADAM NAGOURNEY, NYT,
via Lakeland Ledger

October 24, 2008

MIAMI-- For Sen. John McCain, it was not supposed to be this way. From a commanding lead last spring, in a state where Sen. Barack Obama did not campaign in the primaries and hired a state director only in June, McCain is now locked in a neck-and-neck race for a trove of 27 electoral votes that is vital to his hopes of victory.

His once-close relationship with Gov. Charlie Crist is reportedly strained. And Obama has blanketed the state with advertising and built a huge get-out-the-vote operation - on vivid display this week in the long lines for early voting. The sight dispirited Republican leaders here.

.....

"He has the best political organization for a presidential campaign that I have ever seen here," Tom Slade, a former state Republican chairman, said of Obama.

Obama's huge financial advantage has turned out to be more lopsided here than in any of the other contested states, displaying, in an outsized way, what McCain is facing in Colorado, Indiana and elsewhere. For the week that ended Thursday, Obama spent $4.2 million on advertisements, compared with $1 million by McCain, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group, an independent group that monitors campaign advertising. It was almost impossible to turn on a television this week without seeing one Obama advertisement showing McCain saying he had voted with Bush "90 percent of the time."
Obama's campaign moved to exploit this state's increasingly popular, and relatively new, early voting program in a way McCain did not. Obama came here for two days this week - as did Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - using high-profile appearances to hand out literature and urge supporters who turned out to vote, often right up the street from the rally. The result could be seen in long lines of people at early voting sites.

McCain's advisers said they had put far less effort into the early voting program, instead sticking with what has worked for Florida Republicans for a decade: building up their margin with absentee ballots.

.....

Ahem. " ...building up their margin with absentee ballots", eh?

Funny, this was in today's Miami Herald:


Absentee ballots picked up, then disappear (Miami-Dade Co., FL)

BY LAURA FIGUEROA AND SCOTT HIAASEN
October 25, 2008

Three Hialeah voters say they had an unusual visitor at their homes last week: a man who called himself Juan, offering to help them fill out their absentee ballots and deliver them to the elections office.
The voters, all supporters of Democratic congressional candidate Raul Martinez, said they gave their ballots to the man after he told them he worked for Martinez. But the Martinez campaign said he doesn't work for them.

Juan ''told me not to worry, that they normally collected all the ballots and waited until they had a stack big enough to hand-deliver to the elections department,'' said voter Jesus Hernandez, 73. 'He said, `Don't worry. This is not going to pass through the mail to get lost.' ''
Hernandez said he worries his ballot was stolen or destroyed. He and two other voters told The Miami Herald that the man was dispatched by a woman caller who also said she worked for Martinez. But the phone number cited by the voters traces back to a consultant working for Martinez's rival, Republican congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Martinez's campaign manager, Jeff Garcia, has asked the Miami-Dade state attorney's office to investigate.

.....

More from the Ledger:

But Obama has used sophisticated measures here to find and register new supporters. And Florida statistics this week - which sent a shiver of fear through Republicans - attest to his success: Democrats now have a 660,000 edge in voter registration over Republicans in the state, compared with a Democratic advantage of 280,000 in 2006.

.....

"I've gotten seven calls from live Obama volunteers - and the reason I'm getting calls is because I signed up on their Web site to get notifications from their campaign," said Sally Bradshaw, a Republican who was a senior political adviser to Jeb Bush, the former governor. "I haven't received any McCain calls."

.....

McCain is in this spot today in part because of the conclusion by his campaign this summer that Florida, if competitive, was not as tough as it once was, and that there were more pressing states.

Here is the other reason McCain is in this spot today:







Ten. More. Days.

[PermanentRevolution]

1. We just have to get them all to vote

And, more importantly, make sure they're counted.

[FLyellowdog]

3. And make sure the polls don't close when they should stay open.

Contact Gov. Crist.

[Awsi Dooger]

2. We need to do a better job in registration between presidential cycles

The tendency is always the same, swamping the GOP in calendar year of a presidential election, but allowing Republicans to quietly out register us in the 3 years after a presidential contest. That makes our apparent edge not as great as it appears.

Here are the Florida voter registration net margins since 2000. Notice we lose ground other than in presidential election years. Our biggest loss is always in the two years following a presidential race. That same dynamic holds up throughout the country, for the most part. If we could just maintain even in those two years our registration advantage would really soar: