Absentee Shmabsentee

The absentee voter results that showed David Pepper with 57 percent of the vote got some people's attention early Tuesday night at the Hamilton County Board of Elections, but the chances of those results being an accurate predictor of what will happen once all the votes are counted is remote indeed.

Historically, absentee voters tend to be more Republican than the electorate at large. And, in this mayor's race, Republican voters have no candidate of their own - Republican Charlie Winburn finished third in the Sept. 13 mayoral primary - so their campaign money and, now, their absentee votes, have tended to go to Pepper, who is considered to be a centrist Democrat acceptable to the business community.

The best indication that the absentee results are somewhat skewed in favor of Republicans was the fact that Republican councilman Chris Monzel was running second. Most people in Cincinnati political circles, even in his own party, expect that if Monzel is to win the seat he was appointed to in January, he will end up running eighth or ninth.

-- Howard Wilkinson