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GREENSBORO — Democrats are flooding the polls in early voting, local and state election figures show.

Three Democrats have voted for every Republican in Guilford County through Wednesday, and the margin is 2-1 across North Carolina.

Though nobody’s saying that Sen. Barack Obama is a shoo-in over Republican Sen. John McCain on Election Day, Nov. 4. Early voting started eight days ago and continues through Nov. 1 in North Carolina.

“A lot of our races are tossups,” said Jerry Meek, chairman of the state Democratic Party on his party’s heavy turnout. “It’s a cautious optimism, so to speak.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are banking on mobilizing those who haven’t voted in a while on Election Day.

“We’ve been doing the grass-roots campaign with the phone calls and door-knocking that will allow us to focus on the folks who might be infrequent voters,” said Brent Woodcox, communications director for the state GOP.

“We don’t feel that Election Day is obsolete quite yet,” Woodcox said.

But early voting is popular among the electorate.

Through Wednesday, Guilford County counted almost 33,000, or at least 20 percent more voters in 2008 than over the same week in 2004. Add the number who voted in this year’s first Sunday voting, which was not offered in 2004, and the increase for the first week climbs to 40 percent. And since voting began Oct. 16, the elections office has added extra voting machines at nearly every voting site to cut down lines.

About 60 percent of Guilford County’s 340,000 voters are expected to vote this year, and some elections officials estimate that up to half of those might vote early.

The Democrat-heavy turnout may result from Obama’s focus on North Carolina this year — the Democrat has more than 45 campaign offices compared with McCain’s 35 across the state. Democrats focused on early voting, Meek said, while Republicans said they aimed for voters to mobilize on Election Day.

“It reflects a conscious difference in strategy,” said John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University. “The Obama campaign has put a heavy emphasis on early voting, and not only that, but voting as early in the early voting process as possible.”

Republicans, he said, are likely focusing on Election Day turnout.

Even so, early voting isn’t necessarily the best way to count votes before Election Day, he and others said.

“Before we had the early voting” in 2004, Dinan said, “it was the absentee ballots, and I was always hesitant to draw too much out from them.”

The picture could become clearer soon, said Hunter Bacot, director of the Elon University Poll.

As of Wednesday, more than 832,000 ballots had been cast statewide. About 3.5 million North Carolinians voted in the 2004 election, meaning that the state could hit a third of that total in one week of voting.

“If it closes in on the million mark, then you can make some observations,” he said.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com