While we won't find out the results of the race for Congress for another 29 days, voting is already well underway in a number of states for November, a reminder of the importance that early and absentee voting play in any election for the U.S. House and Senate.
As of October 4 - a month before Election Day - over 61,000 ballots had already been cast just in Iowa.
These first numbers to trickle in are not an actual tally of the votes, but usually just a party breakdown of who has asked for ballots, as well as the rate of return of those ballots to elections officials in various states.
If you want to check this data now and then between Election Day, the best place to go is the Election Project website run by Michael McDonald, now an Associate Professor at the University of Florida.
So far, almost 100,000 people have returned ballots for November; the most detailed information that's being parsed has come in so far from two states with key races for U.S. Senate - Iowa and North Carolina.
Remember - we are not talking actual vote totals here - but it still doesn't prevent lots of election experts from all sides to try and figure out where the votes will end up:
Also, sites are popping up in different states that take an even deeper dive into the numbers, like the folks at Carolina Transparency, who are again breaking out the votes cast by county and even precinct in the Tar Heel State.
Credit: Jamie Dupree
Credit: Jamie Dupree
Active campaign week for the Obamas
While President Obama has no public campaign events on his schedule this week, he is clearly shifting into election mode, while his wife will be on the road again as well.
On Monday in Washington, D.C., the President will raise money for the Democratic National Committee.
Tuesday, the President will do more DNC fundraisers in New York, and then raise money for Senate Democrats in Greenwich, Connecticut.
On Thursday, the President goes to Los Angeles another fundraiser. He will do another DNC event in San Francisco on Friday, and another money event on Saturday in California.
At this point, Mr. Obama has no campaign events where he will be openly appearing with a Democrat running for a particular office.
The First Lady's schedule will take her to the Midwest, as she stumps for votes for the Gov. Pat Quinn in Illinois and Mary Burke, who is running for Governor in Wisconsin.
Just 4 weeks of campaign events left until the mid-term elections.
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