A new gallup poll says about 11% of registered voters have already voted with anothr 19% saying they plan to vote before election day. Those voting run “roughly equal” between McCain & Obama voters. That information does not equate to actual votes however as the poll also indicates “while equal percentages of Obama and McCain voters have voted early, there are more of the former than of the latter, meaning that early voting generally reflects the same Obama lead evident in the overall sample. Thus, if McCain gains rapidly in the days left, Obama benefits, since Obama can’t lose votes he has already received. If McCain loses support rapidly, Obama will not have the chance to pick up even more support from those who have already voted.”

To put it another way, if this poll is like Gallups other polls more Democrats were sampled to reflect a perceived trend that voter registration is heavily favoring Dems. Because of this based on the people in the sample there is no disparity between the liklihood to vote early and candidate preference. There is, however, more Obama supporters who have voted early based on the polls because more Democrats were sampled and nationally the polls show Obama gaining greater overall support than McCain.

The pace of early voting so far appears to be roughly on par with 2004. At about this time before that year’s election — Oct. 22-24 — 9% of registered voters said they had already voted. However, in that 2004 poll, only an additional 13% said they intended to vote early, lower than the 19% who say so in the current Oct. 20-22 average. Thus, early voting this year may end up being higher than it was in 2004. (In Gallup’s final poll before the election that year, conducted Oct. 29-31, 17% said they had voted early, and another 4% claimed they were still going to vote before Election Day.) As noted above, projections from this year’s data are that as many as 30% of voters could end up voting early.