1) Better than 90% support among African Americans
2) Black turnout approaching 35% of the electorate
3) Close to 25% White support.
As of today, more than 1.7 million voters have already cast ballots in Georgia. That represents more than half of the total number of ballots cast in 2004 overall. 35% of the early voters have been Black, and only 60.5% have been White. If these proportions hold throughout election day, Obama would need 23% of White votes (assuming 65% among other non-White voters, and 93% among Blacks). That's exactly what John Kerry got in 2004.
Moreover, there is some evidence that, among early voters, at least, Obama is far outperforming 23% among Whites. Here's the deal. According to the most recent Research 2000 poll among Georgia voters who have already cast a ballot, Obama is getting 55% (this is the only poll in Georiga that breaks it down by early voters, so we can't confirm). Now, we know that 35% of the early voters are Black, 60% are White and 4.5% are other non-White voters. If we allocate 99% of the Black voters to Obama and 90% of the other non-White voters to Obama, that gives him 38.7%. That means the remaining 16.6 points of his support come from White voters. Since 60.5% of the early voters are White, 16.6 of that is 27%.
Ok, that was pretty convoluted. Let me explain this another way. Imagine that there have only been 1000 early voters, 350 of whom are Black, 45 of whom are other non-Whites, and 605 of whom are White. Imagine futher that because of polling, we know that 550 of these early voters voted for Obama. We can safely assume that almost all of the 350 Black early voters were in the Obama camp (let's guess that only 4 didn't vote Obama). We can also guess that at least 30 or so of the other non-White voters were in the Obama camp as well. But let's be generous and assume that only 5 of them didn't vote for Obama. So, if we think that 386 (346 Blacks and 40 other voters who are not White) of the 550 Obama voters were not White, that means that 164 of them were White. In other words, out of the 605 Whites who voted early, 164 of them, 27%, voted Obama.
Does your head hurt? The takeaway point is that if that poll is basically right, and Obama is actually pulling in 55% of the early vote, then among early voters, Obama is besting Kerry's White support levels.
Bottom line: Right now Obama is meeting the 3 pronged standard for winning Georgia. The big question is how different will the NOvember 4th electorate be from the early voting electorate?
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