The absentee votes are still pouring in and the Florida GOP still holds an edge of about 5 percentage points in voted ballots.
But the Obama campaign points out that it's cut cut the GOP lead by about two-thirds since 2008 and that, with the advent of early in-person votinng tomorrow, the Republicans can kiss their lead goodbye. More importantly, the Obama campaign says, is to look at the difference between total absentee-ballot requests (those that have been voted plus those still outstanding). By that measure, the Democrats trail by just 1 percentage point, as opposed to about 11 percentage points relative to this time in 2008.

"We are going to keep Florida blue," said Ashley Walker, the Obama campaign's Florida director. She says the campaign has the knowledge, organization and ability to contact those Democrats who haven't cast ballots yet to make sure they do. Team Obama is also working on some of the independent voters as well (but so is Mitt Romney's team's).

Voted ballots
Party      Total         %
REP    504,940 45%
DEM    445,862 39%
IND    183,527 16%
Total 1,134,329

Outstanding requests:
Party       Total          %
REP    575,069 39%
DEM    600,629 40%
IND    312,058 21%
Total 1,487,756

Here are the top 15 AB hotspot counties. Note the gangbusters numbers out of Pinellas (which we explored yesterday when we also noted the voter-registration gap Republicans are closing. Not: R/D=Republican-Democrat in the last column:
Total    Total      REP      DEM        R/D
PIN      123,467       51,142       48,562         2,580
DAD      100,376       44,670       38,058         6,612
HIL       79,020       31,052       34,011        (2,959)
BRO       58,028       16,824       31,964       (15,140)
ORA       56,679       21,995       25,316        (3,321)
BRE       47,556       23,476       17,089         6,387
SAR       46,186       20,705       17,812         2,893
LEE       43,155       22,041       12,986         9,055
POL       38,209       16,377       16,293              84
VOL       36,059       15,984       13,804         2,180
PAS       34,124       14,498       13,318         1,180
DUV       30,495       15,358       11,221         4,137
CLL       30,280       18,324        6,651        11,673
PAL       29,449        9,274       15,186        (5,912)
SEM       25,806       13,369        8,286         5,083

Marc Caputo