You're missing who gets most hurt by long lines: low-income votters. It makes perfect sense for Democrats want to vote early since low-income voters are more likely to vote Democratic.

Early voters are more likely decidedly rational voters while late voters are more likely undecided emotive voters. The latter may or may not vote. Those most enthusiastic are more likely to have decided early and vote early. It is getting the unenthusiastic out to vote that is the most difficult.

sleepy is right. If both parties had the same demographics, early voting would counter the enthusiasm gap.

But the more significant issue is demographic difference: it's well understood that rain on E-day helps Republicans. Well, early voting is like a reverse rain effect and is sure to help Dems.

Is is possible that lots of early electoral turnout for the Democrats hurts Republicans the most? Specifically, news of large leads for Obama going into Election day might discourage swing voters leaning McCain by decreasing the expected utility of voting.

I think using tepid and enthusiastic is the wrong was to phrase the issue. Yes, tepid (which i read as unenthusiastic) voters will be more likely to vote early if they have a strong presidential preference. However, tepid voters may also be "leaning towards Candidate X." The latter type of voter may forego early voting because he desires more information (e.g. newspaper endorsements, last second revelations) in the days before Nov. 4th.

Examples of tepid voters that may have strong preferences include social conservatives (at least before Sarah Palin) who would certainly vote for McCain, but not necessaily volunteer for him.

While the preference distinction needs to be made for tepid voters, I think it's fair to assume all enthusiastic voters have strong preferences.

Let's not forget elderly voters. Much like the buffet at Luby's, they like to vote early. In previous elections, we were sure the elderly vote would break Republican. That's not the case this time around. Obama's volunteers are working overtime getting committed, elderly voters to the polls ahead of Election Day.

The elderly will still break for McCain. Early voting helps thoe who are younger and have jobs. Wish we had early voting in my state, or even better, on line voting.

Steve

Let's be explicit, the low income voters most impacted by "long lines" and understaffed voting precents in recent elections were people of color. You'll note a lot of early voters in the south are African-American--and African-American churches are helping their congregants get to polls this weekend. Early voting is helping a number of African-Americans believe that their votes have a chance of being counted this time around...there are plenty of concerns among African American voters that mail-in ballots will be discounted--explicitly, the Black community is discussing early voting in person as a means of combatting disenfranchisement.

It's unconstitutional. The Constitution states:
"The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States."
Note it says Day and not Days, and contrary to many states where early voting varies, it mandates that the day must be the same.

Where's Scalia and Thomas on this?

Early voting helps the campaign with better organization and volunteer infrastructure. Team Obama can use early voting to increase the effect of its advantage in field offices and volunteers - the more people who vote early, the greater the odds that their canvassers and phone bankers will be finding new votes. Under the old system, you can waste a lot of time and effort repeatedly contacting your semi-convinced or flaky (mostly younger) voters before election day.

Early voters are more likely decidedly rational voters while late voters are more likely undecided emotive voters.

I see this the other way around. People who are late voters are less likely to be emotive and more likely to have made a considered decision based on the issues. This is the reason for their delay in voting: to gather as much information as possible, as commenter JM noted. The emotive and irrational are those who see their guy as 100% right and the other guy as 100% wrong and therefore aren't as interesed in waiting till election day to gather all the facts as there is nothing fact-based that would change their minds anyway.

Has anyone ever done a study of the demographics of early voters?

Rob: I think you're mistaken. Technically we don't vote for President, we vote for "Electors". So we citizens may vote any old time our state decides, but the votes of the "electors" are given before Congress. (Remember Al Gore presiding over the votes that "elected" Bush?)

I believe in the 19th century different states voted for electors on different days--maybe even in 1864.

Dan,

I think there's an additional factor that favors the GOP in our current scenario.

If Obama voters are hearing that early voting numbers are in their candidate's favor, it may adversely effect their enthusiasm as you define it. Their willingness to incur costs to vote (skip work, wake up early, wait in the rain, etc.) is going to diminish if they think the election's outcome, at least in their state, is now largely determined thanks to early voting.

Joshua- I don't see why the most rational and irrational voters can't vote on the same day. About early voters being more emotional- it's been a 2 year campaign, I don't think there's much left to learn about either campaign.

sleepyirv -

I see your point, but I wonder how many people really paid attention during the primary? The primaries were a bit disproportionate, after all. The Republicans decided for McCain rather quickly, and then there was a general lull in press coverage for them while the nation focused on the Clinton/Obama drama. Some voters may feel that they have a lot more exposure to Obama than McCain, and they would be right from a certain point of view.

From a competing point of view - if you consider that the tone of McCain's campaign changed a lot once it became clear that he was behind late in the game, you can see how some undecided voters may feel that they haven't had enough exposure to Obama. We haven't really seen Obama in a similar position. It's true that there was a bit of a bitter fight with Clinton, but it was her campaign that felt threatened (much like McCain does now) by the momentum of his - not the other way around.

Either way, a person committed to making a dispassionate decision about the election has reasons for staying home until the end of the campaign. That isn't to say that a more rational voter can't have reached his decision much earlier, of course, just that they seem to me more likely to wait it out, all things considered. By contrast, the people who made up their minds one way or the other for irrational reasons have little reason to wait. More likely, they will want to vote early as a way of illustrating their dedication (the other guy is SOOOO wrong that I don't need to hear any more, etc. etc.).

Of course we're dealing with averages, and of course there are irrational late-deciders too. It just seems to me that when you run all the numbers, there will be more rational voters in the late-deciders, fewer in the early-deciders.

My personal opinion, contrary to Dan's here, is that it is probably the more enthusiastic people who vote early. Yes, early voting helps one avoid long lines and possible bad weather. But think of the factors that could make the unenthusiastic (or at least those who aren't political junkies) far less likely to vote early: First, while everyone who doesn't live in a cave knows by now that they can vote on 4 Nov, far less know that they can vote earlier than that. And because early voting rules are different state-by-state, people will need to be informed of early voting by local/state news or campaign volunteers rather than the national media-- this seems like an uphill battle. Second, many people are not even familiar with the concept of early voting, and even if they are, might be suspicious of it. Third, rules vary state-by-state, and early voting is harder in some places than others. In many states, for example, early voting is conflated with absentee voting. Even if it isn't, early voting often requires additional effort when compared to regular voting, including filling out some sort of registration/identification form, or traveling to an early voting station that is different from your regular station listed on the card you receive in the mail. In many states (think: GA), early voting also seems to end a day or two (or more) before Election Day, thus making it less likely that comparatively unenthusiastic voters who get motivated to early vote later/find out late about early voting actually make it to the polls before 4 Nov.

A larger point: There are any number of logically appealing early voting arguments one can make for either side (that is, that early voting supports McCain/Repubs or Obama/Dems). The logic of Dan's post seems plausible, as do many of the alternative arguments in the comments section. In fact, I'm reasonably certain that at least ONE post here will end up being right. The point, though, is that with a plethora of logical, internally valid arguments, we're just going to have to let the empirics sort this one out for us. Then we can all bandwagon to the argument that turns out to be "right" and espouse it in 4 years like it's been conventional wisdom for years.

(For you IR nerds out there, it's kind of like the ridiculous number of competing, plausible explanations for the democratic peace thesis. Yes, they don't fight each other, but who the hell knows why?!?!).

I've been decided pretty much since the race started, and the only reason I voted early was because my wife will be having a baby at any moment. With record early voting, it seems to me that the precincts are going to generally be pretty sparse tomorrow.

On Friday, the early voting place had an hour and fifteen minute wait. I've never had to wait in line to vote before in my life at my precinct, and now there will be almost 50% fewer people voting there.