Early voting: Democrats show strength in key battlegrounds

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Clinton appears to be displaying strength in the crucial battleground states of North Carolina and Florida among voters casting ballots before Election Day, and may also be building an early vote advantage in Arizona and Colorado.

Early voting — by mail or at polling stations — is off to a fast start.

In all, more than 45 million people are expected to vote before Election Day — or as much as 40 percent of all votes cast.

The data that is available represents a small sample of the more than 120 million people who will cast ballots in the presidential election, but a notable one.

While Democrats tend to do better in early voting, Republicans usually post an initial lead with mail-in ballots before Democrats surpass them during in-person early voting in mid to late October.

Democrats so far have kept it close with mail-in ballots, giving Clinton a chance to run up the score with in-person early voting.

Republicans had held a modest lead based on mail-in ballots returned, but that was at a much narrower margin than in 2012, when Mitt Romney narrowly won the state.

After in-person voting began on Thursday, Democrats overtook Republicans in overall votes cast.

[...] in Nevada, which also began absentee voting this week, overall ballot requests and returns were down.

In Ohio, data compiled by Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who runs the U.S. Elections Project, continue to show big declines in ballot requests in the heavily Democratic counties of Cuyahoga and Franklin.

In a statement, the Republican National Committee said it was focused on boosting turnout in 11 battleground states and predicted a strong Election Day performance.