Early voting largely favors Obama

Greg Sargent at Talking Points Memo synopsizes data from an AP report in states with early voting:

* Dems lead in Iowa, with Dems asking for roughly 60,000 more ballots than Repubicans as of last Wednesday.

* Dems lead in Ohio, with about 35,000 more Dems requesting absentee ballots than Republicans as of last week.

* Dems lead in North Carolina early voting, with some 62% of the more than 200,000 who voted last Thursday and Friday being registered Democrats, while only 22% were registered Republicans.

* In Georgia, many of the more than 540,000 ballots that were cast as of Wednesday were in Dem strongholds of metropolitan Atlanta, and blacks accounted for 37% of them.

* In Florida, GOPers hold an edge in absentee balloting, with 220,000 more Republicans requesting absentee ballots than Dems.

Florida starts early voting today, and Obama, Hillary, and Michelle plan to be all over the state the next several day. As of this morning, 691,507 early ballots have been cast in Georgia; though they represent just 29 percent of registered voters in Georgia, 36 percent of the early votes cast to date there belong to African American Georgians. Dr. Michael McDonald of George Mason University has begun to keep a web site that tracks early voting across the United States.