Early voting, exit polls and Nov 2nd

I just thought of this, it’s quite possible it has been discussed somewhere else.

30 states this year have early voting, which means that for the 2 weeks up to the election you can go to a local library (or other special polling place) and cast your vote. According to various reports, the early voters are typically strong partisans, people who are very excited about their candidate.

There’s an especially huge push for early voting in swing states, such as Florida (where I live). Personally I have gotten phone messages and junk mail reminding me to cast my vote early. That doesn’t even factor in the TV and radio ads which take up about 30 minutes out of every hour of media.

Now here’s where it gets interesting, with strong partisans out of the way (pinko commies, neo cons, etc), there will be a higher percentage of new and undecided voters at the polls come election day. According to other reports, early and undecided voters are polling in Kerry’s favor by about 2/3. Thus, I believe it is possible for the exit polls to be unfairly skewed. It could be 2000 all over again, but for different reasons.

Since calling the election is going to come down to a few states, this could be big. I don’t know how much of an effect this could have on exit polls, but I have heard as much as 30% of the vote is going to be cast early or absentee in Florida. Since the 3-5% minority that only uses cell phones got a ton of ink, I cannot believe this hasn’t been talked about.

I have not voted early, I am going to cast my vote on a touch screen LCD the old fashioned way.