GOP extends early voting lead; liberal pundit weeps

When you're opponent is on the 2 yard line, move the goal line. That seems to be the motto for partisan pundit Jon Ralston this morning.

For those of you who have been watching early voting, you have seen Republicans edge out to a small lead initially over Democrats, push it up to about a 2 percent edge and today extend it to 4 percent.

I don't get too excited about such inside baseball stat keeping. The spread between Republican early voters and Democrat early voters is an indicator of things to come, but only one of several. Indeed, it does look favorable for the GOP in Nevada and nationwide assuming Independent voters break hard for the GOP.

The way Ralston interpreted the early voting results was to initially deride the GOP, which started early voting with a slim advantage. Ha, ha, where's the enthusiasm gap, he taunted. When the GOP advantage moved to 2 percent, he continued the derision, but this time with more of nervous laugh, and said if the GOP gets to a 4 percent advantage, that would, indeed, be ominous for Democrats. But they were not at 4 percent, they were at 2.2 percent. So, more taunting about the enthusiasm gap.

Today, the GOP moved to a 4 percent advantage. And what does Ralston say? He suddenly isn't laughing anymore. With a straight face he said that it's really not 4 percent that spells trouble for Democrats, it's now 6 percent that spells doom.

Look, ladies and gentlemen, the take-a-way isn't about early voting stats and what they may or may not mean. The take-a-way is that readers in this age of the Internet must beware of pundits who wear a media jersey on the outside, but a partisan T-shirt underneath.