trump clinton

Early vote numbers offer promising numbers for Donald Trump in Ohio, although Hillary Clinton's campaign aims to close the gap after in-person weekend voting begins on Saturday.

(Left: Gerald Herbert, Associated Press, Photo; Right: Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Early vote totals offer promising numbers for Donald Trump in Ohio, although Hillary Clinton's campaign aims to close the gap after in-person weekend voting begins on Saturday.

The number of ballots cast in Cuyahoga and other key Democratic counties is lagging behind early voting totals from 2012, when President Barack Obama was victorious, according to a cleveland.com analysis of state election data.

As of last Friday, voters in Ohio counties most recently carried by Obama had requested 39,600 fewer absentee ballots than they did in 2012, good for a drop of 4 percent. The largest drop-off is in deep-blue Cuyahoga County, where voters have requested about 42,700 fewer absentee ballots, or 17 percent less, than they did in 2012.

Other counties where voters have requested fewer ballots in 2016 than they did four years ago include Summit (-6 percent), Franklin (-7 percent), and Lucas (-17 percent), three of Obama's best counties.

Voters in Hamilton (+3 percent) and Montgomery (+19 percent) counties have requested more ballots this year. However, while Obama won these counties in 2012, he won them by narrower margins than other large urban counties.

Meanwhile, voters in counties won by Republican Mitt Romney have requested about 52,000 more ballots, or 11 percent more, this year than they did in 2012. Compared to Democratic counties, the voters in Republican counties also have returned them at a higher rate, particularly as time has gone on. Some of the greatest numerical gains took place in Southwestern Ohio counties -- Butler, Clermont, Greene, Miami and Warren -- where Romney won by 60 percent or more.

It's unclear to what extent this might simply show a larger portion of Republican voters are shifting toward early voting, rather than just waiting until Election Day to vote for Trump. Political scientists say early voting can indicate increased voter enthusiasm, but doesn't necessarily correlate with Election Day results. It's also not a given that voters in Republican counties are casting votes for Trump -- this year's unusual and divisive election could see both Clinton and Trump's support eroding in traditional areas of strength.

This year's election is the second presidential cycle where the state has sent out absentee ballot applications statewide, something some urban counties, including Cuyahoga County, had been doing on their own before then.

But in total, the data overall suggests that Trump may improve on Mitt Romney's Ohio performance in 2012, when the then-Republican nominee lost to Obama by 166,214 votes. Republicans nationwide say they have increased their efforts this year to encourage their voters to vote early to try to make up for Democrats' traditional advantage in this area.

"Putting a dent in the Democrat early vote numbers was one of the goals we had in mind when we decided to revamp our ground game in 2013, and this cycle we have had a renewed focus on competing with the Democrats right from the onset," Republican National Committee Political Director Chris Carr wrote in an Oct. 27 memo distributed to reporters.

Chris Wyant, Clinton's Ohio campaign director, in an interview chalked up some of Clinton's early voting under-performance to the elimination of the so-called Golden Week, meaning that Ohio voters have had seven fewer days to vote this year than they did in 2012. He pointed out that Democratic counties actually are casting more ballots per day than they did four years ago.

"If you look at early voting by mail, we're outpacing in the number of ballots that have been cast [compared to 2012], and feel really good about where we are from a statewide perspective, as far as our voters deciding that early voting is a good decision for them," Wyant said.

He also said the Clinton campaign expects to make up ground this weekend, when Boards of Election across the state will open their doors for in-person early voting for the first time. There will be a second round of weekend, in-person voting the following week, the weekend before Election Day on Nov. 8.

In 2012, Cuyahoga County voters cast 25 percent more votes than the state average during in-person weekend voting sessions, Wyant said. Some of the reason for that includes "Souls to the Polls" -- the name for the organized transporting of African-American voters to the Board of Elections straight after Sunday church services -- as well the increased time people have to wait in line to vote at busy urban election centers on weekends when they don't have to go to work that day.

"I think going into this first weekend of [in-person] voting, you'll see those numbers spike in a way that's really encouraging," Wyant said. "And that's just going to be kind of a preview to the second weekend, which I think will be even higher turnout. So I think we'll look back at this in a couple weeks, and we'll realize that more Ohioans have voted early than ever have before."

Asked about the early-voting numbers, Bob Paduchik, Trump's state campaign director, issued a statement that alluded to Clinton's substantially more robust professional campaign operation in Ohio.

"When it matters the most in getting voters to the polls, Hillary Clinton's legions of paid staff cannot match Mr. Trump's grassroots movement," Paduchik said. "This massive enthusiasm gap is reflected in early and absentee voting returns, which show that Hillary Clinton's low-energy campaign to preserve the status quo in Washington isn't motivating regular Ohioans to actually get out and vote."

But Wyant suggested that some of the peculiarities of Trump's candidacy might dampen his performance in historically Republican counties showing an increase in ballot requests, including Delaware County in suburban Columbus, where the Clinton campaign has targeted GOP-leaning female voters repelled by Trump's candidacy.

"Just reading into a traditional blue and a traditional red counties misses some of what's ultimately important, which is what the voters are doing in these counties," he said.

Although Trump badly lags Clinton in most national polls and those in other swing states, public polls suggest the race in Ohio is a toss-up. The most recent polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics show Trump leading Clinton in Ohio by an average of 1.1 percentage points.

Obama won Ohio by about 3 percentage points in 2012.

Click the column headings to rank differently.

County 2012

winner Early vote

requests

10/21/16 Early vote

requests

10/19/12 Change

from

2012 Adams Rep. 2,530 2,396 6% Allen Rep. 8,860 9,390 -6% Ashland Rep. 5,312 5,422 -2% Ashtabula Dem. 8,854 8,711 2% Athens Dem. 5,685 6,111 -7% Auglaize Rep. 4,430 4,015 10% Belmont Rep. 11,319 12,164 -7% Brown Rep. 3,871 3,622 7% Butler Rep. 36,949 29,233 26% Carroll Rep. 2,913 2,721 7% Champaign Rep. 3,690 3,580 3% Clark Rep. 14,095 12,175 16% Clermont Rep. 25,714 20,534 25% Clinton Rep. 4,591 3,709 24% Columbiana Rep. 8,171 7,642 7% Coshocton Rep. 4,940 4,276 16% Crawford Rep. 4,442 4,608 -4% Cuyahoga Dem. 206,156 248,899 -17% Darke Rep. 4,608 3,450 34% Defiance Rep. 4,227 3,120 35% Delaware Rep. 28,610 26,351 9% Erie Dem. 9,062 9,917 -9% Fairfield Rep. 22,255 19,240 16% Fayette Rep. 2,149 2,207 -3% Franklin Dem. 166,673 179,475 -7% Fulton Rep. 3,485 3,631 -4% Gallia Rep. 2,342 2,095 12% Geauga Rep. 13,967 11,958 17% Greene Rep. 20,376 15,897 28% Guernsey Rep. 4,154 3,625 15% Hamilton Dem. 97,499 94,261 3% Hancock Dem. 7,100 6,065 17% Hardin Rep. 2,537 2,573 -1% Harrison Rep. 1,600 1,617 -1% Henry Rep. 2,135 2,129 0% Highland Rep. 3,644 2,430 50% Hocking Rep. 3,181 3,279 -3% Holmes Rep. 2,352 2,587 -9% Huron Rep. 5,764 5,598 3% Jackson Rep. 3,138 2,763 14% Jefferson Rep. 7,315 7,167 2% Knox Rep. 7,711 7,371 5% Lake Rep. 37,544 33,535 12% Lawrence Rep. 6,625 5,728 16% Licking Rep. 24,461 21,680 13% Logan Rep. 5,207 4,105 27% Lorain Dem. 41,094 39,023 5% Lucas Dem. 41,836 50,545 -17% Madison Rep. 4,920 4,588 7% Mahoning Dem. 32,119 33,680 -5% Marion Rep. 6,579 3,849 71% Medina Rep. 24,574 22,558 9% Meigs Rep. 1,980 1,832 8% Mercer Rep. 4,758 4,553 5% Miami Rep. 12,248 9,361 31% Monroe Rep. 1,971 1,509 31% Montgomery Dem. 58,986 49,756 19% Morgan Rep. 1,626 1,735 -6% Morrow Rep. 3,387 3,215 5% Muskingum Rep. 9,565 10,421 -8% Noble Rep. 1,595 1,613 -1% Ottawa Dem. 5,225 5,234 0% Paulding Rep. 1,766 1,775 -1% Perry Rep. 3,794 3,229 17% Pickaway Rep. 5,409 5,721 -5% Pike Rep. 3,316 2,467 34% Portage Dem. 16,981 15,709 8% Preble Rep. 3,065 2,970 3% Putnam Rep. 3,632 3,058 19% Richland Rep. 11,606 13,744 -16% Ross Rep. 7,946 8,102 -2% Sandusky Dem. 4,918 5,038 -2% Scioto Rep. 6,238 6,473 -4% Seneca Rep. 4,587 4,464 3% Shelby Rep. 4,428 4,209 5% Stark Dem. 55,048 38,519 43% Summit Dem. 67,839 72,194 -6% Trumbull Dem. 22,677 23,067 -2% Tuscarawas Rep. 10,932 10,961 0% Union Rep. 6,033 5,856 3% Van Wert Rep. 3,396 3,040 12% Vinton Rep. 1,436 1,500 -4% Warren Rep. 31,689 24,676 28% Washington Rep. 6,405 6,629 -3% Wayne Rep. 10,333 10,825 -5% Williams Rep. 2,902 3,211 -10% Wood Dem. 11,813 13,000 -9% Wyandot Rep. 2,021 1,712 18%

Source: Ohio Secretary of State

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