A new report by Democracy Corps examines the trend toward early voting in the 2008 election and confirms that Barack Obama greatly benefited from banking so many votes before election day.

Democratic Congressional candidates also did better among early voters than among non-early voters.

The study did not analyze the effects of early voting on races further down the ticket, but several Democratic legislative candidates lost the election-day vote but were saved by a strong early vote.

The Republican Party of Iowa will try to match the Iowa Democratic Party’s early-voting efforts in 2010, so we would do well to keep improving on the model. Early voting is insurance against bad weather on election day as well as last-minute smear campaigns against our candidates.