Democrats who voted early or requested an absentee ballot outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in Franklin County, a trend that is "eye-opening, if not shocking," a national election expert said.

"It cannot be good news for the GOP that early voting turnout is trending so heavily Democratic," said Paul Gronke, executive director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon.

"I can think of no good reason why Republican voters are holding their ballots that is good news."

Of the 29,661 Franklin County residents who cast ballots through Saturday at the early voting center at Veterans Memorial, 14,992 are registered as Democrats, 1,260 are Republicans and 13,409 are unaffiliated. Unaffiliated voters are those who haven't voted a partisan ballot in a primary, including the newly registered.

Such a skewed early turnout doesn't alarm the county's Republican Party chairman, Doug Preisse. The skewed vote will moderate as Republicans return absentee ballots by mail or vote on Election Day, he said.

But Democrats are outnumbering Republicans there, too.

So far, 42,498, or nearly half, of the county's 88,374 registered Republicans have requested to vote by mail versus one in three, or 73,292, of the 210,729 Democrats registered and 92,055, about one in five, of the county's 547,240 unaffiliated voters requested absentee ballots sent to their homes.

Matthew Damschroder, a Republican and Franklin County's deputy elections director, said the trends follow the parties' divergent campaign strategies.

"Democrats are really pushing 'Vote at Vets.' Republicans are pushing 'Vote at home,'  " he said.

The flood of early Democratic voters in Franklin County reflects a national trend. Democrats are dominating early voting in key battleground states, according to The New York Times.

Significantly more Democrats than Republicans have cast ballots already in Iowa, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada and other Ohio cities. Republicans, however, are leading voting in Florida, and early turnout appears to be split more evenly between the parties in Colorado, the newspaper reported.

President Bush won all those states in 2004.

"The numbers are just crazy," said Franklin County Democratic Chairman William A. Anthony Jr. "Our campaign (get-out-the-vote) strategy was totally changed this year. We had a 35-day strategy."

Whether such heavy turnout will benefit Democrats in local races is unclear. In the Franklin County primary, so many lengthy ballots were turned in so quickly that former Ohio Democratic Party chief Denny White branded the voting "Obama and Out."

Voters lately, however, seem to be finishing the ballots, the county's Republican chairman said.

Preisse cautioned not to read too much into the lopsided turnout until more ballots are in. A third of all voters could cast ballots before Nov. 4.

In past years, absentee voters tended to be Republicans and snowbirds, but Preisse thinks there's good reason for this year's flock of bluebirds.

"The Democrats are better at rounding up parts of their constituency and sometimes literally delivering them to the polls," Preisse said, noting the student vans and church buses pulling up at Vets.

But he offers a caution: "This is a new phenomenon, and it may take a few cycles to come up with patterns of predictability."

Ohio is among the few states that have relaxed their absentee voting rules just before this election, Gronke notes. States with more experience have found that early voting, by itself, increases turnout in federal elections by only 2 percent to 4 percent.

"What the heavy numbers indicate is a generally high turnout in this election due to the excitement and enthusiasm about this campaign," Gronke said. "I don't think turnout will moderate. It will grow as the election approaches, and we are likely to have a historically high turnout, potentially the highest in a century."

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner predicts an 80 percent turnout, meaning 677,074 Franklin County voters might show up.

Early voters are ones who have made up their minds. And these, Gronke said, "tend to be older, better educated, higher income and more partisan. These same demographic groups trend Republican.

"Note that once you pull these voters out early, the Election Day electorate is a bit more Democratic. That makes the trends this year so eye-opening, if not shocking."

bcarmen@dispatch.com