JaxVotes – News4Jax’s Election Blog

Driving to work Tuesday, there were many sign wavers, but this scene at Atlantic and University boulevards was the only place where I saw opposing sides working the same corner.

Stopping to take a picture, the two women supporting different candidates seemed very cordial.

A McCain sign-waver (a woman on the opposite corner, not in this photo) told us the Obama supporter approached her to say her car was illegally parked and she didn’t want to see it towed.

That’s a spirit of bipartisanship we’ve seen too little of in this campaign.

Sen. Barack Obama arrived in Jacksonville just after midnight Monday morning, spending the night at an undisclosed location before heading to the arena for the first rally of his day.

He board a plane and left Jacksonville about 2:45 p.m.

Campaign officials did not say what he did all that time, but a sports radio station reported that he sat down for his MNF interview with Chris Berman during part of that time. Interrviews with both Obama and Sen. John McCain will air during halftime of tonight’s Steeler’s-Redskins game.

As of 9 a.m. on Saturday, 155,371 voters cast their ballots by voting early and 58,725 more voters’ absentee ballots have been received by mail.  That’s 39.9% of the registered voters in Duval County.

Elections chief Jerry Holland (and, less significantly, this writer) predicted we’d hit 40% total for early voting, and there are lines at the polls Saturday and six more hours of voting on Sunday.

The latest numbers available from the state elections office showed that 1,954,006 people had voted early in Florida as of 5 a.m. Friday.

Early voting in Duval County continues until 6 p.m. today and noon to 6 on Sunday.  Early voting in most other northeast Florida counties ends at 7 p.m. this evening (Saturday).

Michael McDonald of George Mason University is spredicting the highest level in a century:  64 percent of the eligible voters. That’s more than 2004’s 60.1 percent and a hair above 1960’s post World War II high of 63.8 percent. The high for the 20th Century, using McDonald’s calculations, was 65.7 percent in 1908 when William Howard Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan.

Record heavy early voting — people lining up to vote early in Florida and elsewhere, Georgia getting more than twice the early votes it did in 2004 — is one key factor McDonald cites in his prediction.  Democrats are voting in person earlier than Republicans, he said.

“Barack Obama can win the White House next Tuesday over John McCain without carrying Florida and its 27 votes but it has become increasingly clear that the Democratic nominee and his campaign see the Sunshine State as a critical symbolic victory given the state’s history in presidential politics over the last eight years.”

That’s Chris Cillizza writing on the blog on the front page of Thursday’s Washington Post.

Pundits say Florida is learning toward Obama, but that it’s still too close to call.

Real Clear Politics averages several of the best-regarded polls and portrays on a graph how they’ve changed over the past several months.  It’s not a pretty picture for Republicans.

Take a look.

By Thursday morning, 1,670,475 Floridians have voted early in the general election and hundreds of thousands of others have submitted absentee ballots.

In Duval County, 116,482 voters cast ballots in the first 10 days of early voting and 42,111 absentee ballots were received.

For Jacksonville, that means 29.6 percent of registered voters have already voted — a better turnout than the total who vote in most elections — and Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland expects the number to reach 40 percent by Sunday night, when early voting ends.

Weeks ago, Holland predicted total turnout for this election to reach 85 percent, with lines up to 2 hours at the polls on Nov. 4.  Given the record turnout for early voting, that prediction is looking pretty sound.

Fun fact: The busiest early-voting site in Jacksonville so far: the Regency Square Branch Library.

In Tampa on Wednesday, Sen John McCain sat down for an interview that would air on “Larry King Live.”  McCain said race will play virtually no role in how voters will cast their ballots for president.

McCain said people will vote “for the best of reasons, not the worst of reasons.”

We know Florida Senator Bill Nelson has ridden on the space shuttle and, as perhaps Florida’s leading Democrat, supports Sen. Barack Obama for president.

This week, another famous passenger on the shuttle with no obvious political leanings — Sally Ride, the first American woman in space — endorsed the Illinois senator’s campaign for the White House.

Read more: http://www.spacepolitics.com

Barack Obama and John McCain both made it a point to stop by the Parksdale Farm Market in Plant City for Jim Meeks’ strawberry shortcake and milkshakes as they stumped in central Florida.

Both George Bushes stopped by during their campaigns, too.

Read AP story on why Meeks thinks his treats have a lucky ingredient for presidential hopefuls and why Florida is so important on the road to the White House.