Florida has seen massive voter turnout so far, and Democrats hold slight lead in early and mail ballots

Voters in Florida, determined to make their voices heard in the presidential election, continued to smash voting records over the weekend.

The outcome now depends on who shows up to vote on Tuesday.

High turnout

The numbers are staggering.

More than 62% of the state’s voters had cast ballots through Sunday — two days before Election Day. Those final, pre-election numbers reported Monday by the state Division of Elections show a total of 8.97 million mail ballots and in-person early votes have been cast.

Just under 3 million came in the week that ended Sunday. Sunday was the last day of early voting in South Florida and other large counties; early voting ended Saturday for most of the state, and both sides pushed hard for their supporters to vote early.

President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden were in the state on Thursday urging early voting. Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris spent a full campaign day on Saturday in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade County, where she focused on turning out voters in the state’s Democratic strongholds.

The state numbers include early voting through the final day and mail ballots received through Sunday. More ballots are still arriving in the mail — though it’s too late to mail a ballot back now — and some will continue to come in at special drop boxes at Supervisors of Elections offices.

That’s far more mail ballots and in-person early votes than ever before. In the 2016 presidential election, 6.6 million people cast mail ballots or voted early.

The surge is driven by a combination of factors: intense interest in the contest between Democrat Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, and the COVID-19, which has changed the way millions of people vote.

Mail ballots: For the entire 2016 presidential election, 2.3 million people voted by mail. Already in 2020, before the last two days of mail ballots, 4.6 million have voted by mail.

Early voting: In 2016, 3.9 million Floridians cast ballots at in-person early voting centers. In 2020, the number of early votes hit 4.2 million

Democratic lead

Democrats held an 108,000-ballot lead over Republicans as of Monday morning. Analysts assume that the overwhelming majority of the 3.5 million Democratic ballots were cast for Biden and the overwhelming number of the 3.4 million Republican ballots contain votes for Trump.

But the Democratic lead has dwindled.

A week ago, on Oct. 26, 2.6 million Democrats had voted by mail or at early voting centers, about 354,654 more than the Republican total of 2.2 million.

Two weeks ago, on Oct. 19, before the start of in-person early voting, there were 1.2 million Democratic mail ballots cast, which was about 462,000 more than the number of Republicans who’d cast mail ballots.

Unknowns

The biggest unknown is the breakdown from the 1.9 million ballots cast by no party affiliation/independent voters. NPA ballots totaled 1.26 million on Oct. 26, up from about 500,000 on Oct. 19.

Another wrinkle: some polling suggests that a slightly larger share of Republican voters may defect to Biden than Democratic voters defecting to Trump.

As usual, the race for Florida’s 29 electoral votes — more than 10% of the 270 needed to win the presidency — is exceedingly close, and a relatively small number of votes could swing the state one way or another. In 2016, Trump finished 1.2 percentage points ahead of Democrat Hillary Clinton, winning 112,911 more votes out of 9.1 million cast for the two candidates. (A collection of minor party candidates received another 297,000 votes). The 2018 U.S. Senate race was decided by 10,033 votes out of 8.2 million cast.

The close contest and high stakes explains why both sides continue to lavish attention on Florida. Trump had late-night, early-morning rally overnight Sunday in Miami-Dade County. Former President Barack Obama is returning to Miami-Dade County for an Election Eve rally.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics

This is a developing story, so check back for updates. Click here to have breaking news alerts sent directly to your inbox.

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