Reply #16: Umm, you really need to do a "control" group. [View All]

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King county does publish Absentee votes separately, in fact, even on a precinct level. And in fact, Democrats (at least in King County) did perfarm better in absentee than in the booths.

I've been trying to get the time together to finish an analysis of King County absentee versus booth voting, and will hopefully do so before the end of the week. So I won't post images, since I have to get them to a size that won't kill my upload capability, but charts are easy enough (note justices are assigned a party though they run as non-partisan candidates, and the Sebring/Sanders race crossed over party boundaries a lot.)

Republican County-wide -- proportion of total votes received through early-absentee:

Attorney General: Rob McKenna                   0.64
Commissioner of Public Lands: Doug Sutherland   0.66
Governor: Dino Rossi                            0.64
Insurance Commissioner: John Adams              0.64
Lieutenant Governor: Jim Wiest                  0.65
Pres/Vice Pres: Bush / Cheney                   0.65
Secretary of State: Sam Reed	                0.64
St Supr Crt Pos No 1: Jim Johnson	        0.66
St Supr Crt Pos No 6: Richard B. Sanders	0.69
State Auditor: Will Baker	                0.63
State Treasurer: Oscar S. Lewis	                0.64
United States Senator: George R. Nethercutt	0.64

Democrat County-wide -- proportion of total votes received through early-absentee:

Attorney General: Deborah Senn                  0.66
Commissioner of Public Lands: Mike Cooper       0.65
Governor: Christine Gregoire                    0.66
Insurance Commissioner: Mike Kreidler           0.66
Lieutenant Governor: Brad Owen                  0.66
Pres/Vice Pres: Kerry / Edwards                 0.65
Secretary of State: Laura Ruderman              0.66
St Supr Crt Pos No 1: Mary Kay Becker           0.67
St Supr Crt Pos No 5: Barbara Madsen            0.67
St Supr Crt Pos No 6: Terry Sebring             0.64
State Auditor: Brian Sonntag                    0.66
State Treasurer: Mike Murphy                    0.66
United States Senator: Patty Murray             0.65

Now, granted, the applicability to heavily democratic King county to more Republican counties is not established, but before presenting this as "evidence" a control group of counties should be done. Keep looking for data. The Deibold opscan counties definitely have separate absentee data readily available, if they choose to publish it.