Update on Wisconsin Early Voting stats

Let's check back with today's early voting numbers that have been released by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Remember that the 2012 election had a breakdown of the vote that looked like this.



And now here are the top voting counties, with over 623,000 ballots returned.

WOW Counties 16.68%
Milw. County 15.60%
Dane County 14.50%
Brown County 5.18%
Outagamie Co. 4.24%
Racine County 3.89%
Kenosha County 3.62%
Winnebago Co. 3.41%
La Crosse Co. 2.73%
Rock County 2.42%

Rest of State 27.73%

You can definitely see that the higher-population counties in Wisconsin have been more likely to take advantage of early voting. I'd say the higher-than-normal figures in Winnebago, Kenosha and (especially) La Crosse Counties portend well for Dems, as they tend to do much better for the Blue team in higher-turnout presidential years. But with GOPs polling well in the Green Bay-Appleton metro area (at least in the Marquette Law Poll), that might mean a sign of strength for the red guys there.

Also worth noting, the Elections Commissions estimated today that 3.1 million voters would turn out in Wisconsin. That would be slightly above 2012's 3.08 million, and would seem to make it tougher for GOPs to win the state, as their presidential or Senate candidates have never pulled more than the 1.49 million votes that George Bush pulled in 2004, and they'd need another 60,000 above that to pull 50% of the expected turnout.

So far, I'd say the numbers are interesting and indicate a sizable turnout. But other than the higher turnouts overall, I don't see the early vote as a major Dem advantage so far. We will see if tomorrow's rally in Madison with Joe Biden helps to goose those numbers in the last weekday for Wisconsin's early voting.