If the early voting trends are a hint of what is to come on Tuesday then the news is not great for Obama. In Wisconsin (deep blue normally) early voting is up – across the board. It is up by 25% in democrat heavy big cities, and up 40-50% in GOP havens outside the cities:

With Madisonians casting early ballots at a rate of 1,200 to 1,500 a day, that means the total could get as high as 33,000 by Tuesday, perhaps even 35,000.

That would mean that early voting is up by roughly 25 percent over the previous record year, 2004, when 25,258 ballots were cast before Election Day.

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In 2004, the previous record year, roughly 365,000 Wisconsinites cast ballots before the polls opened on the first Tuesday in November. That was around 12 percent of the total turnout.

This year, the number will be dramatically higher. The Government Accountability Board predicts at least 15 percent of the projected 3.2 million voters will do so before Tuesday’s voting begins. That’s in the range of 500,000 early voters

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Early voting is a statewide phenomenon. While the boosted numbers on Madison and Milwaukee are surely good signs for Obama, the John McCain campaign is justifiably excited by the dramatic uptick in early voting in traditionally Republican areas.

In Cedarburg, the suburban-Milwaukee community where McCain and running-mate Sarah Palin made their first campaign stop after the Republican National Convention, requests for absentee ballots are up 40 percent. More than 1,700 early votes were cast by mid-day Friday. In the Racine County village of Caledonia, more than 2,800 early votes had been cast by Friday — a boost of more than 50 percent over the 2004 figure.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that the pattern of 40 percent to 50 percent spikes in early voting are being seen in suburban areas that, while not always Republican in their leanings, are more generally so than the state’s bigger cities and populist rural stretches.

If we looked just at percentages the actually edge in WI is on the McCain-Palin side, doubling the percentage in the Obama areas. The question is who has more voters? Right now, though, interest and participation is equal in deep blue Wisconsin, so one must assume this reflects accurately what is happening across this nation.

McCain-Palin or giving Obama-Biden a run for it, and still can pull out an amazing upset. Because one group is not showing up in Wisconsin:

Second bottom line: Most early voters are not new voters. They are super-citizens who are opting to avoid what they fear will be a chaotic Tuesday. The real “surge” for Obama — if it is to be — will come on Tuesday.

Sorry, but if these new voters aren’t showing up now, they won’t in sufficient numbers to make a difference on Tuesday. Obama is in trouble, he has energized the opposition more than his own wobbly base.

Tags: 2008 Election, Early Voting, WI