Nov 3, 2008 7:29 pm US/Central
Impact Of Early Voting On Election Day
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Early voting in suburban Cook County (File)
CBS
More than 1 million people in Illinois have cast their ballots before the polls open on Election Day at 6 a.m. That's 20 percent of all registered voters.
CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports those numbers may have a significant impact for some important local Congressional contests.
The early voting numbers are much higher in the Chicago area than Downstate. In west suburban DuPage County, election officials said they were flabbergasted as 28 percent of their voters cast early ballots. With Illinois's presidential choice a foregone conclusion, Congressional contests in the suburbs are where there may be some suspense Tuesday night.
In the open seat for the far south suburban 11th Congressional District, Democrat Debbie DeFrancesco Halvorsen faces Republican Marty Ozinga. With more than 30,000 early votes cast, Democratic voters cast 33 percent, Republicans about 16 percent. About half those early voters did not vote in last February's primary.
In the west and southwest suburban 13th Congressional District, Rep. Judy Biggert faces Democratic challenger Scott Harper. More than 80,000 early votes were cast there, with Democratic primary voters casting 32 percent of the vote, and Republican primary voters 21 percent, with 41 percent having skipped the primary.
In the 10th and the 6th Congressional districts, CBS 2 was not able to pull together those statistics. But Republican incumbent congressmen Mark Kirk and Peter Roskam say they're concerned about being swamped by the Obama landslide they fear will wash across their districts Tuesday.
This is the first presidential election in Illinois to allow early voting. And no one's quite sure what to make of these numbers. Republicans are hoping there will be hundreds of thousands of ticket-splitters, who may vote for Obama at the top of the ballot, and then vote Republican for other offices, including Congress.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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