Early Birds For Obama

From the Washington Post:

More than twelve million voters have already cast ballots in the presidential contest, according to one estimate, and new data from the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll shows these voters breaking Democratic by a wide margin. Among those who said they have already voted at an early voting location or sent in an absentee ballot, Barack Obama picked up 60 percent of the vote in the new poll to John McCain's 39 percent. These voters make up 9 percent of "likely" voters in the track.

The senator from Illinois has a similar lead, 58 to 39 percent, among those who plan to vote early but have not yet. (Those who plan to vote on Election Day also go for Obama, but by a narrower, 51 to 45 percent.) These early voting numbers are a near mirror-image of those from the last two elections: A paper using the National Annenberg Election Study reports that George W. Bush scored 62 percent of early voters in 2000 and 60 percent of them in 2004.

Have you voted already? I'm all for early voting, but I really enjoy the thrill of election day - the lines, the chatter, the sense of optimism. My polling place is less than a hundred feet from my front door, so I'm might just sit on my stoop and enjoy the atmosphere for a while.