Republicans Lead In-Person Early Voting as Democrats Hold Mail Ballot Edge; More Than 852,000 Mail Ballots Remain Unreturned
More than 1.8 million Floridians have already cast ballots ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, with Republicans leading in overall pre-Election Day voting while Democrats hold an advantage in vote-by-mail ballots.
As of 11 a.m. Aug. 16, 1,816,739 vote-by-mail and early voting ballots had been cast statewide, representing nearly 13.5% of Florida’s registered voters. Of those ballots, 837,947 were cast by Republicans and 752,553 by Democrats. More than 226,000 ballots came from voters registered with no party affiliation or another party.
Republicans have built their overall advantage largely through in-person early voting. A total of 420,102 Republicans had voted early, compared with 262,309 Democrats — a difference of nearly 158,000 voters. Another 49,351 no-party-affiliation voters and 7,026 voters registered with other parties had cast early ballots.
Democrats, however, led Republicans in voting by mail. State data showed 490,244 Democratic vote-by-mail ballots had been returned, compared with 417,845 from Republicans, giving Democrats an advantage of more than 72,000 mail ballots. Another 151,792 mail ballots had been returned by no-party-affiliation voters and 18,070 by voters registered with other parties.
Hundreds of thousands of mail ballots remained outstanding. As of the Aug. 16 update, 852,659 vote-by-mail ballots had not been returned, including 352,314 issued to Democrats, 266,184 to Republicans, 209,803 to no-party-affiliation voters and 24,358 to voters affiliated with other parties.
The pre-Election Day total was expected to continue increasing after 11 heavily populated counties extended early voting through Sunday. Those counties included Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Leon, Manatee, Miami-Dade, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pinellas and Sarasota.
Florida is a closed-primary state, meaning voters generally may participate only in the primary of the political party with which they are registered. Voters with no party affiliation can still participate in nonpartisan contests appearing on their ballots, including certain local races. There are also circumstances in which a primary contest can be open to all voters if the winner would face no opposition in the general election.
Early voting and vote-by-mail figures should not necessarily be viewed as a predictor of Tuesday’s turnout or election results. Election Day voting could significantly change the partisan composition of the electorate as Floridians head to the polls to decide primary races across the state.
