More Than 5.15 Million Floridians Have Already Voted; Registered Republicans Lead the Early Ballots by About 155,000
The Florida Division of Elections' count compiled at 8:09 a.m. Sunday puts 5,159,537 ballots already cast - 3,256,797 early in person and 1,902,740 by mail - with 550,106 mail ballots still out. Registered Republicans have cast about 155,000 more of those ballots than registered Democrats, and Democrats have already topped their entire pre-Election-Day total from 2022.
More than 5.15 million Floridians had voted ahead of Tuesday's general election as of the state count compiled at 8:09 a.m. Sunday, according to the Florida Division of Elections' vote-by-mail and early voting statistics, in a file opened by the desk this run. The total, 5,159,537, is up from 4,274,034 in the count compiled Friday morning.
The split is 3,256,797 ballots cast early in person and 1,902,740 returned by mail, the Division's figures state. By registration, the early in-person ballots break down as 1,430,249 Republicans, 1,127,932 Democrats, 85,108 voters of other parties and 613,508 with no party affiliation; the mail ballots are 668,424 Republicans, 815,396 Democrats, 46,818 other parties and 372,102 no party affiliation. Added together, registered Republicans have cast 2,098,673 ballots and registered Democrats 1,943,328 - a Republican participation lead of about 155,000 ballots, roughly 3 percentage points of the ballots cast so far, according to the statewide report as compiled by PoliticsElections from the Division's figures, also read this run.
One comparison cuts the other way. Registered Democrats have already cast more ballots before Election Day than they did before Election Day in the entire 2022 midterm - 1,943,328 against 1,870,486 in the Division's final 2022 report, the PoliticsElections compilation notes. And 550,106 mail ballots that were sent out had not yet been returned as of Sunday morning's count, the Division states - a pool bigger than either party's current lead, which is one reason the desk reports these figures as participation, not as a result: party registration shows who has voted, never how anyone voted.
For Duval County voters, the remaining mechanics are the county's own: early voting ended Sunday at 5 p.m., polls are open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time at assigned precincts, and a mail ballot must reach the county supervisor of elections by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, to count. The state's count will keep updating through Election Day.
