Early Birds Get the Worm...

...and, if conventional wisdom holds, they're voting for Obama in big numbers:

So far, it appears that the Obama campaign's drive to get people to the polls in October is paying off, at least according to data from several swing states that track voter demographics: More than 55 percent of early voters in Georgia were female, for instance, and more than 35 percent were African-American; in North Carolina, fewer than a third of those who voted early identified themselves as Republicans; and more than 60 percent of first-day early voters in Clark County, Nev., were Democrats.

"These numbers are really astounding — they defy all the patterns of early voting we've seen in this modern era," McDonald said. Based on past elections, he explained, "the early electorate tends to be more Republican in their character than the Election Day electorate."

Fingers crossed.