Early voting continues throughout South Florida. There are 28 early voting locations in Miami-Dade, 22 locations in Broward and 14 locations in Palm Beach County. Here’s where we stand with votes received by mail and early voting totals through Wednesday.
- Democrats: 1,491,837 – 40%
- Republicans: 1,555,374 – 42%
- Indy/3rd party: 652,919 – 18%
Total votes: 3,700,130
Yesterday, 285,795 voters cast ballots. We’ve now eclipsed the 3.7 million vote mark. In 2014, just over 6 million votes were cast altogether. We are well on our way to record midterm election turnout in Florida. Thursday, 600 more Republicans than Democrats voted. That’s the third straight day Republicans have outvoted Democrats in early voting. All in, 63,537 more votes have been cast by Republicans than Democrats.
Unless the solid majority of Independent’s and third-party folks are backing Democrats, there's no blue wave in Florida. Not knowing what these votes look like makes it irresponsible to draw conclusions beyond that at this point. Needless to say, it's generally better news than not for Republicans in Florida thus far.
If you’re attempting to gauge turnout, here’s what you should look for in Florida. These were the overall early voting totals (vote by mail and early voting) breakouts from 2014 heading into Election Day.
- Democrats: 40%
- Republicans: 42%
- Indy/3rd party: 18%
Republicans held a 2% overall voter advantage in 2014 heading into Election Day in a cycle that was favorable for them generally across our state. As of today, we’re seeing similar splits by voters.
Until Monday’s update.