Are early voters excited about the home team?

Feel free to apply your own interpretation and decide whether it's a harbinger, an aberration or something else altogether. But here's the situation:

As Illinois' early-voting period heads into its final day, primary voters have requested more Democratic ballots than Republican in DuPage, Lake and McHenry counties -- traditional GOP strongholds. In a fourth traditionally Republican county, Kane, requests for Republican and Democratic ballots have been running virtually dead even.

The figures are anything but even in Lake County, where early voters, by the end of Tuesday, had taken 13,756 Democratic ballots and 7,103 Republican. In DuPage County, by mid-afternoon Wednesday, voters had taken 7,331 Democratic ballots and 5,831 Republican. In McHenry County, through Tuesday, requests for Democratic ballots narrowly outnumbered GOP requests, by 2,517 to 2,217.

What does it mean that so many suburban residents are taking Democratic ballots?

One factor surely lies as nearby as Chicago, home of Barack Obama, or Park Ridge, birthplace of Hillary Clinton.

"There's a legitimate chance to have a presidential candidate from the state of Illinois, and in the Democrats' case, you've got two," said McHenry County Republican Chairman Bill LaFew. "I think there's a lot of enthusiasm for them that is bringing out a lot of people who normally don't vote in primaries."

Voter turnout elsewhere does suggest that Democrats have been energized by their presidential contest. In Iowa, roughly twice as many Democrats as Republicans turnout out for Jan. 3 caucuses -- in a state divided almost evenly between registered Republicans and Democrats. And on Tuesday in Florida, where they knew that their votes would not count toward convention delegates, more than 1.6 million Democrats nonetheless turned out to cast ballots.

Here in the suburbs, high demand for Democratic ballots might be traced in part to high-profile local races, too. That may be the case in Lake County.

"One factor we're seeing is the Seals-Footlik race; there are some pretty high numbers out there," said Lake County Republican Antonietta Simonian, referring to the Democratic nomination contest between Dan Seals and Jay Footlik in the 10th Congressional District.

State Sen. Dan Cronin, DuPage County Republican chairman, also cited the Obama-Clinton tussle, which he said has been most news organizations' lead story for "a heck of a long time."

Cronin also surmised that Republican voters are more traditional and therefore more inclined to cast a ballot on Election Day instead of turning out for early voting.

Strong Democratic interest in early voting might not, of course, indicate any particular pattern for general election voting in November.

Bob Peickert, chairman of Turn DuPage Blue, finds the early voting trend encouraging and said DuPage Democrats are confident of a November "breakthrough" in terms of one or more local Democrats capturing county or state seats.

But Simonian, executive director of the Lake County Republican Federation, said it's far too early for Republicans to be overly concerned.

"The time between February and November is, in politics, a lifetime," she said.

Early voting remains relatively new to Illinois. This primary marks only the fifth opportunity for residents to vote before election day. Overall turnout and party comparisons, then, are difficult to draw, especially as this is the first chance for early voting in a presidential year.

Nonetheless, by the account of all suburban county clerks, voter interest has been high since early voting began on Jan. 14, easily surpassing early-vote turnout from previous elections.

Suburban Republicans and Democrats alike agree that higher participation is healthy for everyone -- including, said Lake County Clerk Willard Helander, the taxpayer.

"We spend a lot of money and a lot of work to set up early voting," Helander said. "If you've got (early voting) and are spending taxpayers' dollars on it, let's use it."