Democrats far outpacing Republicans in turnout

Kari Chisholm

Over at his blog, Jeff Mapes provides turnout numbers broken down by party registration - provided to him by the Elections Division.

Here's yet another sign of how much stronger the Democratic vote looks in early balloting in Oregon.

As of Thursday afternoon, 49 percent of Democrats had returned their ballots, compared to just 41 percent for Republicans, according to the state Elections Division. All told, some 457,000 Democrats have returned their ballots. That more than 170,000 additional ballots than have been cast so far by Republicans.

There's not a single county in the state where R turnout has exceeded D turnout so far. And the gap is even slightly bigger in the key suburban counties of Washington and Clackamas counties.

And sure, 49% turnout versus 41% is a nice edge. But remember this: There's been a big surge in voter registration for Democrats this year -- so that's 49% of a much larger number of voters.

Of all the ballots actually returned so far, 50.3% of them have been returned by Democrats. Just 31.5% have been returned by Republicans, and 14.6% by nonaffiliated voters.

Here's the spreadsheet, via the magic of Google Spreadsheets.

By Kari Chisholm Oct. 31, 2008