Early voting starts today in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties. Broward joins Saturday for Florida’s August 18th primaries. Like everything else this year, it feels weird. We’re just coming off of a weekend of watching a hurricane pass us by during a pandemic which will require all South Floridians to wear a mask when they go to place votes. Speaking of the pandemic, it’s led to a record 4 million+ ballots requested to be voted by mail. That's a 64% increase over the previous election cycle. As a result, a record 1.1 million votes have already been received by the state as early voting beings in Florida.
Percentage of ballots already requested:
- Democrats: 46.3%
- Republicans: 32.7%
- NPA: 19.9%
Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1.8% in voter registration. Absentee ballot requests by Democrats far outpaced Republicans on a relative basis. Republicans have typically been more likely to vote in person, especially on Election Day in Florida. Will that be the case again? During this atypical year, we won’t know until we get there but it’s clear Democrats were far more motivated to request absentee ballots than Republicans for the primaries. What do the early returns show?
Already returned ballots:
- Democrats: 47.6%
- Republicans: 37%
- NPA: 14.6%
Clearly Democrats have the early lead on votes already received, though Republicans have narrowed the gap based on the difference in votes requested. On a relative basis, Republicans have been the most likely to return a ballot, followed by Democrats, with NPA’s lagging. It’s typical to see NPA’s vote at a lower percentage in primary elections due to their inability to vote in partisan contests, however, many elections will be decided August 18th, and every voter in South Florida has elections to vote for on their ballots regardless of party registration. So, now we watch and wait to see what happens in early voting. Will that trend hold, or will fewer Democrats vote early because they’ve already voted by mail? How will the pandemic impact in-person turnout for Republicans which has been and, based on a vote by mail ballots will be, critical for their preferred candidates this year?
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