Ohio: Early voting looks bad for Democrats

As goes Ohio so goes the rest of the nation, as the political pundits say.

If that is true, there is reason for great optimism for the Republicans this autumn.

Oh, Franklin County is where Columbus, the state capitol, is.

From the Columbus Dispatch:

In the latest troubling sign for Democrats that 2014 will be a bad year, a Dispatch analysis shows that early voters in Franklin County are trending more Republican than in 2010, when Democrat Ted Strickland won the county by 9 points.

More than three weeks remain until Election Day, but if this pattern continues, it’s an apparent sign that Democrats are not persuading their base to vote for down-ticket offices even if they consider the governor’s race lost.

Four years ago at this point of early voting, Democrats enjoyed a significant advantage — 8.5 percentage points, or nearly 12,000 voters — over Republicans among those who had been mailed absentee ballots in Franklin County.

So far this year, however, more than 4,000 more Republicans have been sent an absentee ballot than Democrats. The GOP’s current advantage is almost 5 percentage points.

The article goes on the explain that if the Dems don't perform well in Franklin County, it bodes ill for them in the Buckeye State.