1.1m Floridians have voted; GOP leads by 5 but Obama team says 'we are going to keep FL blue.'

The absentee votes are still pouring in and the Florida GOP still holds an edge of about 5 percentage points in voted ballots.

But the Obama campaign points out that it's cut cut the GOP lead by about two-thirds since 2008 and that, with the advent of early in-person votinng tomorrow, the Republicans can kiss their lead goodbye. More importantly, the Obama campaign says, is to look at the difference between total absentee-ballot requests (those that have been voted plus those still outstanding). By that measure, the Democrats trail by just 1 percentage point, as opposed to about 11 percentage points relative to this time in 2008.

"We are going to keep Florida blue," said Ashley Walker, the Obama campaign's Florida director. She says the campaign has the knowledge, organization and ability to contact those Democrats who haven't cast ballots yet to make sure they do. Team Obama is also working on some of the independent voters as well (but so is Mitt Romney's team's).

Voted ballots

Party	Total	%
REP	504,940	45%
DEM	445,862	39%
IND	183,527	16%
Total	1,134,329

Outstanding requests:

Party	Total	%
REP	575,069	39%
DEM	600,629	40%
IND	312,058	21%
Total	1,487,756

Here are the top 15 AB hotspot counties. Note the gangbusters numbers out of Pinellas (which we explored yesterday when we also noted the voter-registration gap Republicans are closing. Not: R/D=Republican-Democrat in the last column:

Total	Total	REP	DEM	R/D
PIN	123,467	51,142	48,562	2,580
DAD	100,376	44,670	38,058	6,612
HIL	79,020	31,052	34,011	(2,959)
BRO	58,028	16,824	31,964	(15,140)
ORA	56,679	21,995	25,316	(3,321)
BRE	47,556	23,476	17,089	6,387
SAR	46,186	20,705	17,812	2,893
LEE	43,155	22,041	12,986	9,055
POL	38,209	16,377	16,293	84
VOL	36,059	15,984	13,804	2,180
PAS	34,124	14,498	13,318	1,180
DUV	30,495	15,358	11,221	4,137
CLL	30,280	18,324	6,651	11,673
PAL	29,449	9,274	15,186	(5,912)
SEM	25,806	13,369	8,286	5,083