Early voting update in Iowa and North Carolina

Winning in Iowa, but GOP hasn't surrendered yet. Must current data can be found here.

IOWA

Absentee ballot requests:
Dem 134,589 (60.9%)
Rep 37,544 (17.0%)
No party 48,595 (22.0%)

Context:

In 2008, registered Democrats were 50 percent of Iowa's 481,179 early votes compared to 29 percent for registered Republicans. Day to day, the 2012 number is slowly declining as more Republicans request ballots than Democrats, so there is ample time for Republicans to catch up. One of the ways that they might do so is through a state law that allows a hundred people to petition for a special in-person early voting site, which evangelicals are taking advantage of to request Sunday early voting sites at their churches.

NORTH CAROLINA

Absentee ballot requests:
Dem 25,013 (26.1%)
Rep 51,253 (53.4%)
No party 19,636 (20.5%)

Context:

Unfortunately for Romney, only 13 percent of all North Carolina early votes were cast by mail in 2008, while 87 percent were cast at in-person polling locations. Democrats overwhelmingly voted early in-person in 2008 and 2004, so once that option becomes available in October, the 2012 numbers will likely dramatically shift in Obama's favor.

These numbers are extremely early, and just a tiny percentage of the expected overal voter turnout. So whether the numbers look good or bad, it's too early to celebrate or be depressed. Fact is, the team that wants it most will win these states, particularly in neck-and-neck North Carolina.

Update: Obama campaign is claiming big success registering voters in North Carolina:

The effort, it seems, has borne fruit - to the tune of more than 250,000 new registered voters in North Carolina since April 2011, according to Obama's team. That's more new voters than the campaign has registered anywhere else in the country [...]

Of course, registration numbers alone don't tell the whole story in North Carolina. Democrats have long outnumbered Republicans in the state, even though voters sided with GOP presidential candidates for decades. Democratic registration has fallen by about 90,000 since the end of 2008, while unaffiliated voters have increased by more than 250,000. Republican registration is up by about 5,000 during that same timeframe.

Presumably, the 250,000 Democrats that the Obama campaign has registered are real Democrats, unlike past Dixiecrats that overstated Democratic registration numbers. If we lost racist former Democrats to the ranks of the unaffiliated or Republican, that's not a net loss for Team Blue.