State of the race: Florida

The race in Florida has been tight all year. Mitt Romney got a bump after the first presidential debate, but that has gradually eroded to the point that now President Barack Obama has taken the narrow edge. But with these kinds of numbers, the polling won't tell us who will win. It's all in the hands of the good folks doing GOTV on the ground.

So how does that look?

About 3.5 million Floridians have already cast absentee and in-person early voting and Democrats have an edge of about 76,000 ballots cast so far.

Expect that to continue to grow over the next two days of in-person early voting, which Democrats dominate, especially in South Florida, which is why the GOP Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott effectively shortened early voting days. Democrats have rolled up a 156,000 early vote edge while Republicans lead in absentee ballots case by about 80,000. If every Democrat and Republican who requested an absentee ballot voted it, the GOP absentee-ballot lead would be cut by half.

In 2008, Democrats ended up with a quarter-million vote advantage in early voting, which is why Republicans cut the number of early voting days this year. They hope the advantage won't be as big this year, and absent some monster early voting the next couple of days, it won't be.

For people freaking out about voter fraud'this is how Republicans can most impact results, by making it more difficult for people to vote. Because the more people vote, the better we do.

So GOTV like mad. And if you can't do that, contribute to those doing GOTV.

p.s. Democratic numbers match those from 2008, so Democratic performance isn't down. However, more Republicans are voting early. Again, Republican voters are the most likely to vote'white, older, more affluent. So whether they vote early or late, they were going to be counted regardless. Base Democrats are less likely to vote, so as long as they're turning out in equal numbers to 2008, we're banking votes that the "likely voter" pollster models claim won't be there for us.