The votes aren’t broken out by candidate, but the tallies are still valuable information for campaigns as they allocate their resources. By the close of business on February 27, more than 800,000 votes had been cast. Assessing where these early returns are coming from against the backdrop of prior elections, targeting data, and get-out-the-vote goals helps campaigns boost turnout by telling them where to increase or decrease their efforts. And if you are smart, you can figure out who is winning. On February 27, the political science blog The Monkey Cage ran a post with analysis from Brian Arbour, a campaign consultant turned professor now at the City University of New York’s John Jay College:

I measured the turnout increase from 2004 against demographic characteristics that have differentiated the two Democratic candidates to this point—% Hispanic, Black, Bachelor Degree, and Median Income. . . . Early voting numbers show that turnout is up strongly in counties that have demographic characteristics that favor Barack Obama. Turnout is up only modestly in counties whose demographics favor Hillary Clinton.
The blogosphere puts what campaigns and professors are sifting through as well as their conclusions just a click or two away from the electorate. So the question arises: Do we want early indications of who is winning an election—in inferential form, to be sure—out in public before the regular polls open, let alone close? Would it be better for the government to withhold early voting data for fear it might improperly influence those who have yet to vote?

Some voters might appreciate learning more about who is ahead. Others might take umbrage, seeing it as prejudicial. Remember, the polls show a very close race in Texas. If it doesn’t look so close in terms of early voting, that could be a thumb on the scale of electoral justice.

So far, the numbers with inference added has not circulated very far. In its coverage of early returns data, the Dallas Morning News restricted the subject of its February 26 story to the news of a very high turnout on the Democratic side. Kos did much the same on his blog the next day. The only media influence here is a civic one to go join the huge crowds and vote.

My own view on this is that a wider audience for Arbour’s conclusion that early voters were turning out for Obama would do more good than bad. Spinning is part of campaigning and governing, and early returns can be spun in favor of either candidate: “Come on aboard the Obama bandwagon” or “Don’t fall victim to Obama fever.” So this is not a threat to the process, but a new type of challenge to those in it—yet another manifestation of the speed and depth of net-borne politics.

Michael Cornfield is Vice-President of Research and Media Strategy at 720 Strategies.