they go ahead and vote earlier. i don t think on the whole, it makes that much difference. jon: that s interesting because if he s saying both parties go out and early vote in equal numbers, that could be a positive sign for mcsally s campaign. some places can you actually see in real time when the ballots themselves come in, and that s what they do in arizona. in some states, there s not that same system. all 50 states have a different election system, and there are 37 states that do allow early voting, and you re seeing in the presidential campaign, 40% of the ballots were cast early. people i do agree with larry sabato in the previous sound bite, it is like rearranging the deck chairs. we know people that have a tendency to vote early are more partisan, more motivated voters and they would vote early, they were going to vote on election
it s hard for a person like me who really disagrees with almost everything jeff sessions has ever said in his entire life to realize that he s what s standing between constitutional norms and the president of the united states. and we really need him to continue to stand up like that. and so i can only applaud those five senators for speaking some truth to power to him and to try to encourage him to stick with it. peter, cynthia, josh, stand by for a second. i want to go to steve kornacki. as you can see on the bottom of the screen, we are now getting those results in arizona. steve, tell us what we know. this is the way it works in arizona. they come in in giant bunches. what you see right now, maricopa county in the phoenix area, more than half the votes in the entire state comes out of here. what you re looking at is the early vote, the vote that was cast before election day in maricopa county. the vast majority of the vote is mcsally. is cast early.
ballots were cast early, were cast by mail. this has been a trend. early voting, vote by mail. we are at the point where the clear maybe overwhelming majority of votes cast in elections in montana are cast before election day. if you were a democrat hoping that news of that attack that altercation with the reporter by greg gianforte yesterday would have a last minute effect one story is it just doesn t look like there were a lot of votes out there to be persituated. a couple of other things that we are seein maybe important indicators for the rest of the countrin terms of this as a bell weather. think of last november when donald trump defeated hillary clinton one of the stories was he rolled up massive margins in rural areas. rural largely white areas of the
there have been court cases this year about early voting. so they really had a very honed-in, targeted message to this audience again, because as you pointed out, steve, they know how important north carolina has become in this election cycle. all right, chris jansing down there in winston-salem, north carolina. chris, thanks for that. again, that question, north carolina. hillary clinton could basically shut this whole thing down if she can win north carolina, and guess what, as chris was telling you, the election is already started there. people are already voting. this is a heavy early voting state. let me show you what information we have from north carolina. so so far more than 600,000 votes have been cast. what does that mean? that is about 15% of the total of all of the votes that were cast in 2012. this is a state where about half of all the votes in 2012 end up being cast early. what do you see here? there is a big advantage for democrats in terms of the ballots that have be
previpr precisely who s voting early, especially in ohio. president obama leading in ohio among early voters. 57% to 39%. in 2004, just 20% of all ballots were cast early. this year, experts are predicting nearly 40% won t wait until november. to the brain trust we go. keith boykin, democratic strategist and cnbc contributor. ni nia-malika henderson. good sunday afternoon to all of you. keith, let me start with you. as of today, early voting under way in 35 states plus the district of columbia. despite recent court rule in addition ohio and pennsylvania and florida and some other battleground states that give victories to the obama campaign, how worrisome are the efforts to impose rules on early voting?